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By K.\TE Freiligkath Kroekkr. OLD TALES FROM GREECE. By Alice Zimmern. FRANCE. By Mary C. Rowsei.l. ROME. By Mary Ford. SPAIN. By Leonard Williams, CANADA. By J. N. McIlwraith. R. fMERX. mim£ ^ f MONUMKNT Tl) CHAMIM.XIN. rNVKII.F.l) AT QlJKHEC, SKI'TKMUKH, IH<>« If The Children's Study CANADA iiY ) N Mrll.W RAi'I li W T O K O N T O w 1 ), 1. 1 A M \'>u 1 c;i;s QUEBEC JX3^y ro THE THE THE \ TO Ti {All rights reserved.^ THE R ONIMUO CONTENTS PART FIRST TO THE END OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY CHAPTER I THE FIRST PEOPLK OF CANADA CHAPTER II THE EARLIEST VISITORS PAGE I 13 CHAPTER III THE VOYAGES OF JACQIES CAKTIER AND OTHERS 24 PART SECOND TO THE END OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY CHAPTER IV THE ROMANCE OF ACADIA 35 vi CONTENTS CHAPTER V THE FATHER OF NEW FRANCE . CHAPTER VI THE MISSIONARIES . . . , PAGE 49 62 CHAPTER VII A ROYAL PKOVINCK • • CHAPTER VIII FRONTENAC AND LA SALLE 74 88 PART THIRD TO rUR END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CHAPTER IX NEW FRANCE SPREADS HEK WINGS . 102 CHAPTER X THE FIGHT FOR NOVA SCOTIA . CHAPTER XI CANADA HOLDS HER OWN . CHAPTER XII LOUISBOURG TO QUEBEC "5 127 140 PACK 49 6i 74 88 ruRv 102 rii 127 140 CONTENTS CHAI»TKK XIII THR FIRST FKW YEARS OF HRITISH RILP CHAPTER XIV THt UNITED KMPIRE LuVALlSTS vii VAO¥. '54 166 PART FOURTH TO THE END OF JllE NINETEENTH CENTURY CHAPTER XV THE WAR OK I812-I4 CHAPTER XVI MISGUIDED PATRIOTS CHAPTER XVII THE NEW DOMINION . • • • . CHAPTER XV MI THE NORTH-WEST CHAPTER XIX HRITISH COLUMBIA CHAPTER XX •DAUGHTER AM I IN MY MOTHERS HOUSE, BUT MISTRESS IN MY OWN ' 179 19a 204 215 22» -^39 PART FIRST 70 r//£ £.VD OF THE SIXTEEXTH CEXTURY CHAPTER I THE HKST PEOPLE OF CANADA HE oldest Canadians are the Indians. For many hun- dreds of years before white men had set foot upon the western continent red men had found homes there, both in North and South America. Where did they come from at the first ? A CHILD'S Their high cheek-bones, Roman noses, small, deep-set eyes, and straight hair make them very unlike the darker, woolly-haired negroes from Africa, and very different also from the white-skinned races of Europe. It is among the Tartars and other wild tribes of Eastern Asia that are seen faces which might pass for North American Indians, and that is one reason why some of the men who have made a study of the subject think that the first people of America came from Asia. The two continents are so close together up at the north-west, it is not hard to cross from one to the other on the ice at Behring Strait. Probably the Eskimos came that way. These natives are the same, whether on the Siberian or the Alaskan side of the Strait, and they occupy also the Arctic regions of North America, coming as far south as the shores of Hudson's Bay, and eastward to the coasts of Greenland and Labrador. The name Eskimo is an Indian word, meaning "Eaters of raw flesh," and these people consume much fat and oil too, but very few vegetables. An Eskimo might pass for a white man if his face were washed, but he thinks that many layers of grease keep out the cold ; and he does not believe in house-cleaning either. He is generally under HISTORY OF CANADA es, small, ike them [ negroes from the is among Eastern ght pass lat is one ive made the first I. together to cross Behring ime that whether e of the Arctic as far ay, and nd and word, these too, but rht pass jed, but le keep ieve in under five feet in height, has a flat, broad face, and a stay-at-home disposition. He would rather live in his snow hut up in the frozen north and hunt the whale and the walrus for his food and clothing than come southward to sunnier climes to quarrel with the Indian for his hunting grounds. It may have been the Indian who drove him up there in the first place, but most students think that the Eskimo was the last comer. No one knows, but there are reasons for imagining, that if the people of Asia did cross to America they did not all come at once. There would be a fr-mily, perhaps, of one tribe driven from island to island of the Pacific Ocean which landed at last on some part of North or South America. This may have happened many ages ago, before the seas and the continents had settled into their present form, when there may have been less open water to cross. The currents of the Pacific Ocean run towards America, and most of the winds blow in that direction. Whether landed by accident or driven out of their early homes by war or by want of food, it is probable that these emigrants settled some of the islands of the Pacific and came even so far as South America before the less fertile parts of Asia were filled up. The first people of America have been there T 4 A CHILD'S a very long time. The earliest 'arrivals were not so wild and savage as the later lot. Whei the Spaniards landed on the coast of South America they were astonished at the wealth and cleverness of the natives, many relics of which are still to be seen. In North Amer ca it is the Mound-builders who have left traces of their work, even so far north as Lake Superior, where they worked the copper mines. The mounds of earth they threw up, and which one sees in different parts of the United States, may have been churches or burial-places, though they were more probably defences against their enemies. These enemies would likely be the first of the Indians, who would drive the Mound-builders farther and farther south, and at last put an end to them alto- gether. These are some of the guesses white men have made on how the red men came to America, but nothing can be told with cer- tainty about it, because the Indians of old could not wri^e and did not keep any stories of their race in a form that can be understood by the people of to-day. We study the Indian skull, his religion, his language, his features, his habits, and some of us think he came from Asia, while some think he did not. All that is known for certain is HISTORY OF CANADA ivals were later lot. the coast nished at e natives, be seen, i-builders 3rk, even iiere they lounds of one sees ates, may s, though s against Lild likely 10 would d farther em alto- liite men [came to ith cer- |s of old stories lerstood dy the ge, his is think ink he rtain is that he was there when the first Europeans landed. Those bold sailors were lookin<^ for a passage to the East Indies, and when they found land where no land was known to be, they thought it must be some part of India, and so they called the natives Indians. There were a great many different tribes, speaking a great many different tongues, but those that lived in the country now called Canada were mostly of the Algonquin family, who bore the name of Micmacs in Nova Scotia, Abenakis in New Brunswick, Ot- tawas and Montagnais in the province of Quebec, Ojibwas in Ontario, Blackfeet and Crees in the North-west. Tribes of the same family, settled farther south, used to till the soil, but the Canadian Algonquins lived by hunting, and when they had killed with their bows and arrows all the game birds, the deer, and the bears within a certain district they would roll up their tents, which were merely skins stretched on poles, and move elsewhere. Sometimes they moved for another cause — the Iroquois. This was the family of Indians who lived to the south of Lake Ontario in what is now the northern part of the State of New York, between the Hudson and the Genesee rivers. Therci were five divisions of them, and therefore they were called the Five Nation w ! 6 A CHILD'S Indians — Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. Though not nearly so large a family as che Algonquin, the Iro- quois gained strength by their union, and they were the most fierce and cruel, as well as the bravest and wisest, of all the Indians. If they had joined h-^.nds with the Algon- quins, instead of fighting them to the death, they might have kept the white men from settling this country for a century or two. But to go to war was the most important part of an Indian's life ; he cared for nothing else ; and the aim of the Iroquois was to kill off every other nation but his own five. Family fights are always more bitter than those between strangers, and so the wars between the Iroquois and Hurons were the most savage on record because both be- longed to the same stock. The Hurons, who lived between Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay, made friends with the Al- gonquins to gain their help against the Iroquois, but the Neutral Nation would not join them. That family was also related to the Iroquois, and lived between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. They were called neutral by the French because they did not side with either the Hurons or the Iroquois in their wars. It might have been safer for themselves to have joined the stronger party. HISTORY OF CANADA londagas, 3t nearly , the Iro- ion, and 1, as well Indians. 2 Algon- le death, en from or two. nportant nothing as to kill ve. ter than he wars i^ere the loth be- Hurons, )e and the Al- st the luld not lated to e Erie neutral lot side luois in er for party, because in the end the Iroquois killed or adopted the whole of them. Captives from other nations kept up the number of the Iroquois, whose losses by war were, of course, very great. If a brave who went out to fight did not come back, his parents or his wife, his brother or his sister would usually adopt in his place one of the prisoners brought in by the war party, and this man would be bound to make his own the family which had thus saved him from a horrible death by torture, even though he should have to fight against his own friends ever afterwards. White men were sometimes adopted by the Indians in this way, and often they did not want to leave them, even when they had the chance. The Hurons and Iroquois lived a more settled life than the Algonquins. They grew Indian corn around their villages and laid some of it up for winter use. Their houses were made so long that seven or eight fami- lies, and even so many as twenty could live under one roof. The sides of these lodges were made of long poles, slim enough to be bent together at the top, and to be placed also along the sides, crossways, to make a frame for the big pieces of bark that were tied on to keep out the rain and snow. The inside was a long, wide passage, with an 8 A CHILD'S open skylight the full length of the roof to let out the smoke, for clown the middle were the iires, one between every two families, to warm them in winter and to cook their food all the year round. On either side, next the wall, was the long, low platform on which the Indians slept in the same clothes, made of the skins of animals, that they wore by day. There was always a head man in each tribe, and he took counsel of others noted for being either great fighters or wise thinkers, but he never did more than ad- vise or persuade the warriors. Each one could go on the war-path when he saw fit, alone or with two or three of his fellows, and the smaller the party the more glory was gained by the scalps they brought home. The custom of taking off the skin and top hair of an enemy arose, so say the Indians, at the time that a famous chief pro- mised to give his beautiful daughter to the man who would bring him the dead body of the chief of another tribe, whom he hated. The young man who killed the enemy was hotly pursued by the friends of the dead chieftain when he was bringing him home to the living one to claim the reward, and as the body seemed to become heavier and heavier he cut it down lighter, bit by bit, 111 HISTORY OF CANADA le roof to Idle were milies, to heir food next the )n which es, made wore by in each rs noted or wise han ad- ach one : saw fit, fellows, e glory brought he skin say the :ef pro- to the 3ody of hated, ny was i dead home d, and er and >y bit, till he arrived before his employer with only the scalp-lock in his hand. That was enough to show that he had done the deed. Another custom of long standing among the Indians was the use of wampum, which was first made from bits of shells, but after- wards from beads got from white men. Necklaces of wampum were highly prized by warriors and squaws alike, and every clause of a treaty or agreement of any sort had to be sealed with a belt of wampum or it did not hold good. It was used as money too. If a man killed one of his own tribe he was not killed himself, but was obliged to make presents of wampum and other things to the family of the man he had murdered. So when he wanted a wife he bought her from her father, and she became his drudge and slave for the rest of her life. It was the squaws who planted the corn when any was planted ; they who made those marvels of lightness and toughness, the birch - bark canoes, as well as the bows and arrows for their lords, and carried the heaviest burdens at the portages. That name was given by the French to the places where canoes and all they contained had to be lifted out of the water and carried through the woods, to avoid rapids and waterfalls, 10 A CHILD'S IncUan babies we Jred"^>; ;°j'^- stout strips of birk on I '^. ''^''^'een two 'heir mother . Sk, T""^ =*''°"' <"> children died vo.,„„ /, ^^ °'' ^'cWy "'e way. |o CTuTT, '""'"' °"' °^ sometimes beMedfh. '' P*°P'^' "'ho 'o make .nefdtlZ'"''",""^ ^""«''*«'^ ■•0 longer strong e,ou'hTo '""f" "'"^ *^^« hard marches fn ^e" rfh of ? '," *''^ '°"«' of these customs the i / °°''- '" =P*te their parent their brntr"' "''""^ '°"^ °f and indeed <^f thT who ^"■', ""^ ^'^^^■■«- they belonged Thi? *"'?" '° ^^ich ='-ng, thoShuseS Znttlr '" '"^ cure a sick nerson A "*^^"^ ^^ey used to would fight tTZn'^lT'^' --y they and the care they Zk^f Te Z.^^'^i friends, after death ''"^^ °f different clans of a fr^' *''^" =>" "'e bones of thdr rlfl. f '^°"'^ ''""« the speeches ^^dttZ t,T T' "'•^- and how useful thlT ' ?'"'*'"« ''°«' brave aiive. All th? bo„e7a7'',^' "^^^ -''«" of more recent de^H ' ^f" "^ ">^ bodies together in a deep ^iM ".*'''" "^ "^""^^ beside them w::L^xrbot:r':„i HISTORY OF CANADA II ikes and » een two bout on sickly 1 out of !e, who ughters -y were le lon^', n spite "ond of sisters, which in the sed to r they killed, ies of «vas a the the ^here )rave vhen )dies iried and and arrows, kettles, food, wampum, trinkets — anything that the spirits might be likely to need on their journey to the land of the hereafter. No Indian believed that a man died like a dog ; he was more likely to believe that his dog lived for ever, like a man. The natives on the Pacific coast of the continent are a lower type than the Eastern tribes. They flatten the heads of their children by tying boards on the front of their skulls while still soft, and when they grow up they seem to have no foreheads. The men are not tall and sinewy, like the tribes of the plains to the east of the Rocky Mountains, but are short and thick-set, with very strong arms, gained by generations of paddHng, for they live chiefly by fishing. The boat is not the birch-bark canoe but the dug-out, made from a single log of one of the big trees of the country, and some- times it is ornamented at the bow or stern by a rude carving of bird or beast. With a mild climate and plenty of fish and game near by, the " Siwash," as the British Columbia Indian is called, has never been such a rover nor such a fierce fighter as his brother to the eastward used to be. Against all the scalping and burning and torturing that white men have suffered from It I * '' '^""•^■'^ "'STORY OK CAI.ADA Indians must be placed >»,„ •■ . ■•^d men by stro ,g S.or .„?h t" '" '"' pox, both unknown beC k ''^ ""^ ^•"■■"' " must be remembererf^ ^.^opeans came, early settlers Jem "ed 7ro„ h' °'' '"'"^'' "-^ Families never d« J ! ^I"" ^''^ ^''••st for want of proner T,n! "/.""'"^ ■-• """g °"t of wl,at ilT' 1 w •■ '^'y "'«de tool! beginning of Am^r c 'n 1 """ "'■'" ^^••"* ">« "on- Tlfe IncUrnsT^' h 7^""' '''' '"^^n- and to shoot fur be ,W, ^"' '1°^^ '" "-ap '■■^h through holes ^Zfce "T '. T' '" a trail throuifh tl,„ t ' ""'■'' '° fo"ow eyes could no? ee andTo'' T^'' °^'""''">- °"t if lost in thTwol T'°''"'*"'^''-^vay bark of the trees to ^e ' ^ "-"""^"""g "^e g-ew thickest for t,.f "'V^'^'"^'' ^'^e it '" smoke tobato wl ? "" "°'-"' ' "°"' how to raise InrHn" '° «™"' Potatoes : forest tree to W, he'" T''" ">« ^'»"'«"g ""«1 such thne t "the tn ''""' ''*''"""« tlie smaller grains <-nf. ■ ''' "^^^^d for '"anted, and low i^^ " '^'°"S''^^ and 'hemsel'vestolr;,..:"^'^ '" ''"''-"^' of a new country. ' e"cumstances ADA •lie to the he small ms came. Tiuch the rhe First a thing de tools was the t inven- ' to trap and to ) follow rdinary eir way "g the side it ; how atoes ; mding Irving d for i and idapt inces QUEBEC CHAPTER II THE KAKLIKST VISITORS ''HOEVER first landed upon the western shores of the American continents, whether they came from China, i ^ Japan, Siberia, or from ^* the islands of the Pacific Ocean, they did not go home and write, or have written for tliem, accounts of their voyages and the strange new lands they had seen. Of the earliest visitors to the eastern shores, on the other hand, there are records in plenty, some of them quite clear, others a little misty. Some describe wild men and animals, plants, mountains, rivers, and rocks, as they are now known 13 '4 A CHILD'S about one-legged f,» «°'^ ''"^ crysta) -d de^onsTat rk'nfw""' '°'^°^^^i The historical tales anrf."*^" ^^'^'ed. the Northmen-a nil " "'° '^e myths of Norway, Sweden and n""" '° "'^ "^"ves o ,^gas, and from 'thesl oM '"f ^-^"'^ ^^^'ied 'hat five hundred yea^s hlf ''°T '"' '«->■•> discovered by Columbns^f 7/^"^^ ^as ^y .'he Norsemen or North '^^^" ^'^"ed Vikmgs (Sons of the Fi^^N '"^"- These ,'?°«e on the sea than "'^ ^'^^^ more at "dragon "ships, wither ''"'^' ^"d 'heir Sterns, propelfed d her 5^;^"'"'^ ""^^ -"d ho h stronger and faster tL 1°' '='^«' ^^re Columbus. About Z "'^ 'caravels of seeded upon fcda„^,;^^=^ 875 they had '° Greenland was a sW J° '^' °°^ards hack to their homes in ^.'.^"'"■"ey 'han 886- The saga of p ^'^andinavia. ?%'^'"edamfri'=Cw'^^'"^"=''ow Iceland, got i„to "roubw]: '""^ «ed to =M further, sailing "^t ."'^ ^"^ "^d where with some ^coS ° ^^^^nland, f '"self, he spent three vl' ^ ''^"y as 'he coasts. At last "hev fi^' '" ^^P'°"ng place for a settlemenr^ ^^^ "P°" a good f aab now stands^'; ".^ "'^''^ J^'-ane' '^^ad of igahto fiord ^^^^ """^^ at the "• " was, and still HISTORY OF CANADA 15 ' are fairy ^ crystal, bgoblins, existed, myths of latives of re called ve learn rica was 1 visited These tnore at id their )ws and is, were ivels of 'Y had iwards than |s how d to fled iland, ly as 'ring iood |ane- the still is, one of the few spots that deserved the name Greenland Eric gave to it, which spread afterwards to the whole peninsula. He thought rightly that there was a great deal in a name, when one wanted to coax emigrants to a place. The first settlers from Iceland built their houses in the spot Eric had chosen, and called it BrattahHd. Other tiny villages sprang up near by in course of time, and a settlement was also planted on the west coast, so far north as Godthaab. Eric the Red had several sons. Leif, the most famous of them, was a Christian, and brought the first priest to Greenland. The remains of a stone church built by the Norsemen can be seen at the present day, and they are said to have had several monas- teries, a cathedral, and about a dozen churches for a population of five or six thousand. Leif Ericson was much impressed by the story of one Bjarni Herjulfsson who told of losing his way in a mist while sailing between Iceland and Greenland, and of seeing land when the fog lifted, which was neither the one country nor the other, but lay further to the south and west. According to a writer of his own country, ''Leif was a large man and strong, of noble aspect, prudent and moderate in all things," but he had his share 16 A CHILD'S •'e t?rS.f '''=«-- -d though •"•s mi„d to reach for^h'"^'?' ''^ «='^« "P Which Bjarni h"d set ""'"°^" ~»""-y before long, eUhe" rlh^' '^ ""^ '^"^ '^-'^ fine wooded cott dl r^'?'' "°' "^^^ ^e "'«^y kept on farther L'H ""^ ^J"'""'' ^° 'o a shore where the t '°"* '''"^ '^^""e "-ey nan>ed it Ma JhndTw^''r ^° ""<=% was probably the co^", l}^""^^^'"^)- This Nova Scotiaf so that Leff e'"' ^'"^'°" °'- men were the fir,7 p ""°" '""'d his C-da, so far as' we ^.7"" -"- '" ^'^'^^Zr^'^. ''^y '-ded at a -d they caneT r''a":rT/™^^-'"^' spent the whole winter ^v^t. ""^ '''^^ to them after the c nvL A '^'''"^^ •"'« 't was probably no fl' ',. "".r^"''''"^'' "^"t sachusetts. From th. /■ '"""' "'''*" ^^■ were a number ofextd.r"' T'''^ *''^^<^ l=i"d to Vinland I' n'*'°"' f™™ G'een- '■'"ber Which taf'sctce^ H ■'""« """^ and Iceland ; and ZZl f ° '' '" Greenland ^pent two orXr:ils^^t^■^"- country, hewing down thT f . . ""^ "^w we.-e to .alee .n^stX L/tipT "■'^' HISTORY OF CANADA id though made up n country with Leif find land ewfound- : like the Bjarni, so md came o thickly d). This Jreton or and his sitors to led at a [rowing, ire they :d mild nd, but Mas- :1 there iGreen- home nland utters new i } 3 Another saga relates how a rich nobleman, called Thorfinn Karlsefni, tried to found a colony in Vini nd. He took cattle there, along with his settlers, and the natives were much alarmed at the bellowing of a bull, for they knew no domestic animal except the dog. Nor did they understand the value of the costly furs they sold to the Norsemen for little strips of red cloth, just as they gave them away to later explorers for beads and trinkets. Though friendly at first, it was not long before quarrels arose between the white men and the red, and the idea of planting a colony in Vinland had to be given up, for the Norsemen had not the firearms of a later day which gave Spanish, French, and English pioneers so great an advantage over hordes of savages armed only with bows and arrows. Early in the fifteenth century the Green- land settlements were entirely forsaken, after an existence of four hundred years. It was most likely the Eskimo who destroyed them, though the decUne of the shipping trade with Norway and Denmark, and a plague called the Black Death may have helped. Nowhere else on the western continent are there any traces -of the Norsemen re- maining, though the walls of an old stone mill near Newport used to be thought their IS A CHILD'S work. Longfellow's poem, " The Skeleton in Armor," was written with that idea, and it gives a good picture of one of those old vikings, but neither skele^jn nor tower had in truth anything to do with the Norsemen. Greenland in their day was considered but a remote part of Europe, and therefore they had no notion of the importance of their discovery. Believing, as they did, that the earth was flat, it might extend westward without end, for aught they knew, or cared. America had been discovered again for two hundred years before those who knew of the Norse sagas began to say, " This must be the country the Northmen called Vinland." 1394. An Italian, named Zeno, wrote an account of a visit he paid to the dying Norse settlements in Greenland, but with that ex- ception there were no visitors to America from Europe (who left cards) for about one hundred years. The nations of the older continent had too many troubles at home to spend their strength in venturing abroad ; but peace brought plenty, and plenty brought the desire for luxuries that could be had only in the East. Trade revived, and India was the country every adventurer wanted to reach. Whoever should first succeed in sailing there, to bring home a ship-load of silks and diamonds, of gold and silver, sap- HISTORY OF CANADA 19 Skeleton dea, and those old )wer had rsemen. »nsidered therefore tance of did, that westward )r cared, for two w of the it be the 1" rote an g Norse hat ex- ^merica )ut one 2 older ome to broad ; >rought id only lia was :ed to !ed in 3ad of r, sap phires and pearls, would be the most famous man in all Europe. The Portuguese, who ranked next to the old Norsemen as mariners, tried it by sailing down the coast of Africa, even so far as the cape they named " Good Hope," because they were sure they had found the right way to reach India ; and they had dis- covered most of the islands of the Atlantic Ocean before the Pacific was known to exist. Christopher Columbus went with the Portu- guese on some of their voyages, but it was learning the wonderful lesson that the earth is round which decided him to sail directly westward in order to reach that eastern *' land where the spices grow." 1492. The story of his going from court to court in Europe to find a sovereign with faith enough in his enterprise to fit out vessels for him is well known. So, too, is the glory he added to the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella by planting the Spanish flag upon San Salvador, one of the Bahama islands. Columbus thought it was an island off the coast of Japan which he had reached, and to the end of his life he believed that the different islands he discovered were not far from the clime he had come to seek. Therefore he called them the West Indies, and their natives, Indians. 20 A CHILD'S [I Columbus made four voyages to the New World, but the year before he found the southern continent an English expedition had liv ied upon the mainland of North America. This was commanded by John Cabot, a Venetian by birth, but living with his family in Bristol, at that time the busiest seaport town of England. Hearing the story of Columbus, and plenty of sailors' yarns besides, Master Cabot made up his mind to outdo them all. Nothing could be done without leave, in those days, so he had to get permission from Henry the Seventh before he could set out in search of new lands. He went at his own expense, and promised that one- fifth of the riches he might gain should be given to the EngUsh king. 1497. Generally two or three ships went together on these voyages into the unknown, but John Cabot sailed away to the westward with one small vessel and a crew of eighteen men, including probably his second son, Sebastian, a young man of twenty-four. They started in the beginning of May, and it was the 24th of june when they caught sight of the northern headland of Cape Breton, though they thought it was China. Cabot went ashore, and, according to the custom of discoverers, he set up the flag of HISTORY OF CANADA 21 the New 3und the «pedition 3f North hy John ing with e busiest "s, and Master io them it leave, 'mission e could fe went lat one- ould be )s went known, stward ghteen i son, y-four. y, and caught Cape ^hina. o the ag of the king who had sent him and took pos- session of the country in his name. No natives were seen, though some rude tools were found that must have been made by man. It is not unlikely that the explorers sailed round the Gulf of St. Lawrence and out by the Straits of Belleisle, the best exit in the summer season. When they reached home, in the month of August, so great a stir did John Cabot make with the news he brought, that we are told he "dressed in silk and was called, or called himself ' the Great Admiral.' " He and his son set out on a second trip in April of the next year, and they visited different points along the coast of North America, probably as far south as Cape Cod, but no one knows exactly, nor has any one told what became of John Cabot. His son, Sebastian, made other voyages alone, and is said to have entered the great inland sea, Hudson's Bay. 1500. The same shores touched upon by the Cabots were visited by Gaspar Cortereal in the interests of the King of Portugal. He brought back savages and white bears to Europe with him, but from his last voyage he never returned. 1504-1518. While the Spaniards were keeping up their search for gold in the south, fishermen from Normandy and Brit- m m I. .1 ' Si ■'itl 22 A CHILD'S |i ii I I I, tany were finding out the wealth more surely to be drawn in the shape of codfish from the Banks of Newfoundland. These are not land-banks but flat-topped mountains in the Atlantic Ocean whose heads come to within five hundred feet of the surface. Cape Breton was christened by Breton fishermen ; but it was the Baron de Lery who first tried to plant a colony in that region. He made a bad choice in Sable Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia, a bleak and barren spot noted ever since for its wrecks. His settlers all died, though their cattle lived on and multiplied. Meanwhile the King of France woke up to what his neighbours of Europe were doing in the new West, and he cried — " Shall the kings of Spain and Portugal divide all America between them without giving me a share ? I should like to see the clause in Father Adam's will that makes them his sole heirs ! " 1524. Francis the First therefore sent out a sailor of Florence, called Verrazano, to take what he could, and the parts taken seem to have been those already claimed by Cortereal and the Cabots ; but it is not easy to say for certain, because each man made his own map and gave to the lands he saw what names he pleased. Very HISTORY OF CANADA 23 ilth more >f codfish These mountains come to surface. Breton de Lery in that n Sable a bleak for its ih their nt out ^o, to taken limed s not man ands Very curious are these old charts, showing as they do that the early visitors never dreamt what a solid bulk of continent was between them and Asia. For long years they thought they were discovering islands through which, sooner or later, the desired passage to the Indies would be found, but after all Vasco da Gama got there first by sailing round the Cape of Good Hope (1497). The coast-hne of North America was not discovered as a whole, but just a scrap here and a scrap there. We see from maps made even in the middle of the sixteenth century that South America had been sailed about, and its size and shape pretty well known while North America was still thought to consist of islands. First Brazil, then the whole of South America, and lastly North America were named from the famous pilot and astro- nomer, Americus Vespucius, a friend of Columbus, who made several voyages to both continents in the early years of the sixteenth century. He did what no one before him had done — wrote about the Western Hemisphere when he came back from it — and he was also the first to speak of a New World, as distinct from the Old World which Columbus and all the others thought they had found. I 114 MANITOBA CHAPTER III IJi! THE VOYAGES OF JACQUES CARTIER AND OTHERS T. MALO on the northern coast of France is famed for its sailors, and there was born on December 31, 1494, one called Jacques Cartier. He went to sea when only a boy, but he was a man of forty ere he set out upon the voyage which has handed down his name. Before that he had been a " corsair," roaming the high seas in search of weaker vessels to capture, generally, though not always, those of the nation with which his own chanced to be at war. Cartier's ideas of right and wrong were never very clear, but he was a brave sailor. Picture one 24 Mlii^iijiiiiji. A CHILD'S HIvSTORY OK CANADA -5 lorthern famed there cember acq lies to sea nit he upon ''n his rsair," eaker 1 not h his ideas 2iear, one going to sea in a vessel smaller than most modern yachts, and sailing in it not over a well-known route where thousands of ships have been before him, but over a pathless waste of waters, at a time of the world's history when men peopled the unknown with all sorts of terrible creatures. 1534. Francis the First, the same king who had sent out Verrazano, ten years before, gave Cartier leave to go, and he took with him one hundred and sixty-two men on his two little vessels, sailing from St. Malo on the 20th of April. Three weeks later he sighted Newfoundland about Bonavista Bay, and put into a harbour close by to have his ships repaired. Then he sailed northward near to an island com- pletely covered with birds, or so it seemed, and swimming towards it, to feast upon them, was a huge bear " as white as any swan." Cartier and his company went onwards to the coast of Labrador, which looked so dreary, even in the month of June, they were sure it must be the land, told of in the Bible, that was set apart for Cain ; and the natives were unfriendly enough to have been his descendants. Through the Straits of Belleisle went the two little ships, sailing southwards, across the Gulf of St. Lawrence, t I nists, Sir Humphrey decided to take them home to England. He himself was on bo^rd the Sn.drrcly a tiny craft of only ten tons burdcii, wlien it was lost in a storm. Some of hia last words have come down to us — " Courage, my lads ! Heaven is as near by sea as by land." 1592. A Greek pilot, called Juan de Fuca, was sent by the Spanish viceroy of Mexico to sail northward along the Pacific coast and see if he could not find a passage through to the Atlantic Ocean. He thought he had found it at the south of Vancouver Island, when he sailed into the wide channel which is now named after him ; but his discovery was scoffed at by the sailors of his own and a later day, who declared that the Straits of Juan de Fuca did not exist. NEW BRUNSWICK PART SECOND TO THE END OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY CHAPTER IV THE ROMANCE OF ACADIA 4 **HILE France was busy at home, in the war with Spain, lighting her own subjects also about their reHgion, she had no time to attend to Canada, and left it alone for half a century. So soon as there was peace within the borders of Old France, the Marquis de la Roche was made viceroy of New France, with power to control its trade, grant land to settlers, and, in short, to 35 w i!, i ■ m i- 36 A CHILD'S have all things his own way ; but these wide powers proved to be of small use to him. 1698. As colonists he had to take prisoners from the jails, and his sailors too were mostly pressed into the service against their will. Being afraid that his settlers would desert if he landed on, or near, the mainland of America, the Marquis put them ashore on Sable Island, more than a hundred miles from the coast of Nova Scotia, to stay there until he found a place for them ; but his little ship was caught up in a gale from the west and driven straight back to France. There he found his enemies in power, and they had him put in prison, so that it was five years before he could get the ear of the king to tell him about the convicts he had left to their fate. As if cold and hunger were not enough to fight, those wretched men had fallen to fighting one another, and when at last a ship was sent to rescue them from Sable Island, only twelve out of the forty were found alive. They had built a frail house for themselves out of an old wreck, and had lived by fishing and by hunting the descendants of the cattle Baron de Lery had left on the island. Henry the Fourth expressed a wish to see these long- bearded, fierce-looking men, dressed in the skins of wild animals, and when he heard HISTORY OF CANADA 37 their story he gave them fifty crowns apiece and a pardon for all their past sins ; but the Marquis de la Roche was so much dis- appointed at the failure of his grand schemes for a colony that he pined away and died. The next attempt to found a settlement in Canada was made at Tadousac, where the S^guenay River enters the St. Lawrence. Out of sixteen men who were left there to get valuable furs from the Indians in exchange for a few beads, knives, and hatchets, four died, and the rest would have shared their fate had not the natives taken pity on them, and when winter came, warmed and fed them in their wigwams. Pontgrave was the name of the merchant who had thus tried to add to his riches by the fur trade, but upon his next voyage to the St. Lawrence for the same purpose, four years later, he had with him a man of a higher stamp. This was Captain Samuel de Champlain, of the Royal Navy, who had served as a soldier too, yet was like a priest in his piety, and zeal for converting the heathen. 1603. Pontgrave and Champlain crossed the ocean in two vessels so small that a man would be considered mad who would venture out upon the inland lakes in one of them, if the water were rough. Never- I y ■ ■ )• 38 A CHILD'S !il theless, they arrived safely in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and sailed up the broad river of the same name, past the present sites of Quebec and Montreal, where the Indian villages that Cartier had found there were no longer to be seen. But the rapids of St. Louis, near the island of Mount Royal, ran swiftly as ever, and as before they had prevented Cartier from going further up the river, they now prevented Champlain. He returned to France and did not go into the St. Lawrence upon his second voyage the next year. This was taken in company with a Huguenot nobleman, M. de Monts, who had got leave from the king to colonise Acadia, a tract of country in which were included the present Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and part of the State of Maine. De Monts was made viceroy of all that region ; and besides Champlain, there sailed with him the Baron de Poutrincourt, while Pontgrave followed later with supplies. They explored the Bay of Fundy and discovered the beautiful Annapolis Basin, with which Poutrincourt was so much delighted that De Monts made him a present of land upon its shores. After seeing that suitable site for a colony, why they should have fixed upon St. Croix, a barren little island at the mouth of the river of the same name, cannot be History of Canada 39 told. But there the settlers were landed — a mixture of nobles and convicts, Protestants and Catholics, soldiers and working men — eighty in all. A rude fort was built, as well as a chapel, a house for the viceroy, barracks and storehouses. Poutrincourt went home to bring out another band of colonists for the settle- ment he intended to found at his new domain on Annapolis Basin which he called Port Royal. Pontgrave went off on a trading trip up the St. Lawrence, and thence back to France, but De Monts and Champlain spent the winter at St. Croix. A bitter cold one it turned out to be. The men fell ill of the scurvy, and nearly half of them died before Pontgrave came to their relief with suppHes in the spring. Champlain alone had kept up his courage, and whenever the weather permitted he had sailed on ex- ploring trips, visited diffeient points along the coast, as far south as Cape Cod, and gone also some distance inland, which none before him had done. Being geographer to the king, he took notes of the natives and their customs, as well as of the plants and animals he saw ; and he wrote them down in his diary with good literary style. 1605. Nowhere had either he or the viceroy seen a better place for a settle- ■Iff 40 A CHILD'S ! : ment than Poutrincourt's grant at Port Royal, so rather than spend another winter at St. Croix, the colony was moved over there in August. The buildings taken down on one side of the Bay of Fundy were set up on the other. Then De Monts and Poutrincourt went home to France on ! iisiness while Pontgrave and Champlain were left in charge at Port Royal. The second winter was not nearly so hard as the first had been, and Champlain, as before, did his best to keep up the spirits of the colonists, but it was not easy to do that when the food began to run short. Pontgrav^ feared that De Monts had for- gotten his settlers, and he had actually embarked with all but two to seek help from some of the French fishing-boats likely to be found near the banks of Newfoundland, when M. de Poutrincourt sailed into the basin. Pontgrave and his shipload were not far off, and were soon recalled to make a fresh start at Port Royal. The third winter was mild for Acadia, and the settlers had learned through their hard times how and what to hunt for food. They had made friends with the Micmac Indians of the neighbourhood, especially with an old chief, called Membertou, who brought a number of his people to set up their wigwams tra( HISTORY OK CANADA 4t ( 'l f near Port Royal. They taught the French to trap the hare and the beaver, to follow the big moose on snowshoes far into the trackless woods, and in return they were made welcome to the fort and to the fare within, whatever it might be. There were fish and game in plenty, and Champlain started a spirit of friendly rivalry among fifteen of his comrades to see which would provide the best fare for the table of Poutrincourt. These skilful sportsmen called themselves " The Order of the Good Time," and good times indeed seemed in store for the whole colony when it suddenly got a " Notice to Quit." The power granted to De Monts had been taken from him as care- lessly as it had been given, and therefore the colony he had tried so hard to piajit in Acadia had to be deserted just as the sun was beginning to shine upon it. Such a thing as a settlement supporting itself, as those of New England did, was never dreamed of in New France. The Pilgrim Fathers came out to Plymouth of their ov^^n free will, to escape persecution for their religion at home, as the Huguenots of France would have been only too glad to do, had they been allowed. The first settlers of Canada were taken out by some rich noble- man, like De Monts, to whom the king had / li 'I f :< I m < ill 42 A CHILD'S given a charter. When the Viceroy of Acadia could no longer keep up Port Royal, it was deserted, and the fields that had been cleared and planted were left to Membertou and his tribe. While the French had thus been striving to keep a hold upon Acadia, English sailors were reaching into the heart of the northern regions. Henry Hudson had made three voyages to America and had left his name on a river of modern New York before he sailed through the straits called after him, into the vast bay which also bears his name. He spent the winter upon its shores, but his cowardly crew rose against him and set him adrift in an open boat along with his son and a few loyal sailors. They were never heard of again. Always searching for a passage to the Pacific, English explorers kept on sailing into Hudson's Bay, in spite of the fate of its discoverer ; but they did no more than christen unknown waters, such as Baffin's Bay and James Bay. 1610. The same year that Hudson was lost saw Poutrincourt back in Acadia. He was determined not to give up the land which had been granted to him, and which was his by right. It was three years before he could get the king to listen to his claim, 'I HISTORY OF" CANADA 4S but when at last he landed again in Por<^ Royal with a shipload of settlers, he found the houses and furniture just as they had been left. The Indians had stolen nothing, and they were overjoyed to see the French- men back again, especially the chief, Mem- bertou, who was now over one hundred years old. Poutrincourt had a brave young son, called Biencourt, eighteen years of age, whom he sent home to France to get help for the colony, but by that time Henry the Fourth was dead, and with him had died all interest in Acadia except among the Jesuit priests and a few of their wealthy converts. Bein- court came back and Poutrincourt went over, but in his absence a crushing blow fell on Port Royal. 1613. Captain Samuel Argall, of Virginia, sailing northward to the hshing banks of Newfoundland, was filled with patriotic wrath at hearing of the French settlement, for had not Cabot claimed the whole of the mainland for England before Verrazano took possession of it for France ? The Virginians landed and utterly destroyed Port Royal. Biencourt was from home at the time, or they might not have had so easy a victory. With Charles de la Tour and a few remain- ing followers, he spent the winter in the :? I I 44 A CHILD'S I S woods, without a roof for shelter, and there his father, Poutrincourt, found him in the spring. ArgalFs raid called the attention of England to Acadia, and King James the First resolved to settle some of his own countrymen in it. 1620. He granted the whole of Acadia to a Scotchman, Sir William Alexander, who brought colonists to the Port Royal Basin. Poutrincourt died in 1615, but Biencourt had never given up his rights to the region, and at his death he left the pioperty to his friend and comrade, Charles de la Tour. This brave young man made his headquarters near Cape Sable, at the place now named after him, while his father, Claude de la Tour, had a post on the Penobscot. For awhile the Scotch and the French dwelt in peace, as Acadia was large enough for both, but presently war broke out between France and England, and Sir William Alex- ander thought the time had come to claim the whole country, and divide it among the proposed Order of Knights- Baronets of Nova Scotia, who would bring out settlers to their estates — when they got them. To further this end. Sir William offered to include the La Tours, father and son, among the Knights-Barons, if they would peaceably give up their rights to the whole HISTORY OF CANADA 45 country, and be content with a portion. Claude de la Tour was well content to do this, for he had been to England as a prisoner, had married a wife there, and been well treated ; so that he sailed with a load of colonists to occupy the estate promised to him and his son. They were both Huguenots, and could look for more kindness as English subjects than as French ; but Charles de la Tour would not forsake his country. He held out in his Fort St. Louis, even against his own father, and Claude was obliged to take his setllers round to where the Scotch were alreariy planted near Port Royal, which had been taken by the English. 1632. When peace came again, and the whole of Acadia was given back to France by the Treaty of St. Germain-en- Laye, Claude de la Tour had to seek safety with his son, who for his loyalty was made Lieutenant-General of Acadia. Other Frenchmen of high and low degree came out to lord it over the Scotch settlers, and to keep the English of Massachusetts at a proper distance ; bui Port Royal was deserted. 1643. The Seigneur d'Aulnay Charnisy, commander of a new Port Royal on the other side of the Basin from the old one, was very jealous of Charles de la Tour, to whom the king had granted land directly across the Hi f 1 r ■V. HI ,1 1 r li ^f. 46 A CHILD'S I" i \ i! Bay of Fiindy, at the mouth of the river St. John, where he had better trade with the Indians of whom he was an old and tried friend. La Tour being a Protestant, there were many enemies ready to bear false witness against him when Charnisy sailed to France on purpose to gain his arrest. He got his desire — an order to take Charles across the sea to stand his trial — but the stouthearted La Tour refused to be taken, so Charnisy blockaded him in his fort and then lay in wait for a vessel with one hundred and forty emigrants and supplies that was coming from the Protestant city of Rochelle. When at length she appeared, Charles de la Tour and his wife managed to slip through the blockade in a rowboat, and got on board the Rochelle vessel, which took them off to Boston, and there they got help. Charnisy never knew that his prey had escaped him till live ships from Boston appeared at his back and chased him across to his own side of the Bay of Fundy. Once more he tried to take the fort of La Tour when the master of it was away in Boston, and only the mistress left to defend it. This she did so bravely that Charnisy had to withdraw, very angry at being beaten by a woman for the second time. He had tried and failed to get her arrested for treason HISTORY OF CANADA 47 1 ; * I. while she was in France clearing the good name of her husband. Two months later, when Charles de la Tour was almost home with help from Boston, Charnisy came again to attack Madame de la Tour, and by this time the food was all done and her followers were in despair. She gave up the fight on the strength of the victor's promise to spare the brave men who had defended her husband's property and herself, but Charnisy basely broke his word and hanged them all. Madame was brought out, with a halter round her neck, to see them die, and Charnisy took her back to Port Royal with him, where she lived only three weeks. 1667. This bad man prospered for a time, but five years later he was drowned in a little river on his own estate, and who should marry his widow and fall heir to his com- mand but Charles de la Tour ? The King of France came to see that he was a much- wronged man, and made him governor of all Acadia. No sooner was he settled once more, and beginning to grow rich through the fur trade, than the countiy was taken by the English. La Tour went over to England, and laid before the Protector, Oliver Crom- well, the grants made to himself and his father by Sir William Alexander, and these " ' '""^ °^ '^^ and looked after his mon. ! ""'''"*= '''g^nt In truth the r-,„,!r- ^ interests. governed XSe at"?' t' ^^^ a "nch- far better if tey htl h"" ^'"'^ «"' °n themselves, as the nI ^^ '^" '""re to Merchants were not Xwedtr^ "^- from France the goo LfT ""■'"« "^er trading with the wt n i!^ "^"'''^^ for 'hem from a new ttn^v to '1 '° «^' kmg gave the sole riZ ^^ . . '''''°'" '^e years. During tha! t?^ " ''^^^ for forty Pany-s vessels coudHL"""?.'"' ""^ ^^ -- - ^-r oStri; -^^^ I 1 i i > ., ;p.'i <>, IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) t 1.0 lifKfi I I.I 11.25 25 ti, m 122 ■ itti ^ L^ 1^ 2.0 1.8 1.4 - 6' V] « ci^ ^>' 33 WEST MAIN STREET WEaSTER.N.Y. MS80 (716) 872-4S03 82 A CHILD'S any direction ; but Intendant Talon worked very hard to instruct them in the working of metals, the spinning of their own yarn, the weaving of their own cloth, and the making of their own caps and shoes. He visited the different cotes — a Canadian name for the homes strung along the banks of the St. Lawrence and the Richelieu. Each little village consisted of fjirmhouses facing the river, as the natural highway, and built close together for protection against cold and Indians, while the farms stretched for miles back into the country. The opening up of roads, the encouragement of porpoise fisheries, the giving of charity from the king — these were but a few of Talon's labours. The colonists were too well cared for to learn independence. Not only did the intendant import cows, sheep, and horses, he undertook to bring out wives for the settlers, chosen, as far as possible, from hardy countiy girls in France. About twelve hundred of them arrived within five years, and were married thirty at a time. Woe betide the luckless bachelor who refused to take a chance in the lottery ! He was fined, forbidden to trade with the Indians, or to go into the woods for any purpose, and made so uncomfortable generally that, as a rule, he was glad enough to go to the HISTORY OF CANADA 83 ins, md as Ithe appointed place within a fortnight after the ship's arrival to pick out a bride for himself. The Siilpician, Father Dollier de Casson, wrote a history of Montreal which takes the place of a Jesuit Relation. A very large, strong man, full of good-humour, Dollier had been a soldier before he was a priest and never quite forgot his old calling. He was a prominent figure on Tracy's expedition against the Iroquois. His order became seigneurs of Montreal, and in the division of their lands they gave a large free grant at Lachine to Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, a young mjin of twenty-three just out rom France, whose duty it then became to bring settlers who would clear the ground of trees and build a village of farmhouses, surrounded by a wooden fence or palisade, for a defence against Indians. Lachine was directly in the track of the tribes friendly to the French, coming down from the west with their furs ; but it was also in the track of the Iroquois, coming more often in war than in peace. La Salle, however, always got on well with all sorts of Indians, and had no trouble in learning their languages. A party of the Seneca nation spent a whole winter on his seigneurie and told him much about the 84 A CHILD'S Ohio, " the beautiful river," that started in their country and became a wide and wind- ing stream, flowing, La Salle imagined, into the Gulf of California. With a great mind and an enterprising spirit, he was not likely to confine himself long to the narrow limits of Lachinc and the fur trade ; but he was poor, and before he could set out on his longed-for expedition he had to sell his property back to the Sulpicians. 1669. When the head of the Montreal Seminary came in this way to hear of his plans it was decided to send a couple of Sulpician priests along with La Salle, so that the Jesuits might not have all the glory of converting the Indians ok the west ; and the chosen two were Fathers Galinee and DoUier de Casson. The party of twenty- four men in seven canoes, with Seneca guides, set out on the 6th of July, and by paddling and portaging up the St. Lawrence, reached Lake Ontario on the 2nd of August. Paddling the whole length of the big lake, they met, in a village of the Neutral Indians near the head of it, Louis JoUet, a Quebec merchant, on his way back from Lake Superior, where Talon had sent him to inspect the copper mines. The Sulpicians were so much pleased with Joliet's map of the route he had followed, from HISTORY OF CANADA 85 >m Lake Erie, by way of the Grand River, they decided to go that way, but La Salle's mind was set upon the Ohio, and he was never the man to be turned from his purpose. Therefore the party divided, the priests reaching Lake Erie and spending the winter near Long Point. In the spring they passed into Lake Huron and paddled away up to Sault Ste. Marie, whore the Jesuit mis- sionaries were not very glad to see then^., so they only stay d three days and returned to Montreal by the French River ard the Ottawa. The sole result of the.r long journey was a inap which Father Galinee drew, very exact as to the parts visited, but wrong in making Huron and Michigan all one lake. La Salle corrected that error by coasting the shores of Lake Michigan the following jOrti, when he also discovert J the Illinois River. After the priests left him, he actually had reached the Ohio with the help of some Onondaga Indians, and had followed it down to the falls at Louisville. 1^70. The Sulpiciaiis were one means of lessening the power of the Jesuits, and Talon added another when he got leave for the Recollets to come back to Canada. They took up their old quarter^ ac the convent on the St. Charles, and were as poi)ular as I! ' 1 86 A CHILD'S before with the colonists ; but for living among the Indians and keeping th'^m loyal to the French they were not so useful as the Jesuits. Nor did Talon confine his schemes for the good of Canada to the neighbourhood of Quebec and Montreal. He and Governor Courcelle were at one in their desire to extend the boundaries of New France far to the west and south, so that the English settlers might be confined to the Atlantic seaboard. With this view, though opposed to the lawless coureurs de bois, they encou- raged respectable explorers, of whom the Jesuits were the most persevering. 1672. Charles Albanel, a priest of that order, was the first white man to reach Hudson's Bay by the overland journey from the head waters of the Saguenay, and he took possession of the whole region for the French kfng. Two years before that, it had been granted by the English king, Charles II., to his cousin, Prince Rupert, and about twenty lords and citizens calling themselves the Hudson's Bay Company. After being driven by the Iroquois out of the Huron country, some of the Jesuits had gone west with their converts, and as early as 1660 they had made a map of Lake HISTORY OF CANADA «7 Superior. Father Marquette was in charge of the mission to a remnant uf the Hurons at Michihmackinac, the straits between Lakes Huron and Michigan, but, Hke most of his kind, his zeal was now divided between making conversions and making discoveries. He had been present at the gathering of Indians brought together at Sault Ste. Marie, the entrance of Lake Superior, by the famous explorer, Nicholas Perrot ; and he, like La Salle, had heard of the great river called by the natives, " The Father of Waters." He resolved to find it, if he could. 1673. With Louis Joliet and five other men in two canoes, Marquette started from his mission on the 17th of May. The party worked their way up the Fox River, already explored by Father Allouez of the Jesuit mission at Green Bay, and from the head of the stream, led by two Indian guides, they carried their canoes for more than a mile to the Wisconsin. Paddling down that river, they reached, on the 17th of June, the Father of Waters, the Mississippi, that they sought. They sailed down it as far as the mouth of the Arkansas, and then made the return journey by way of the Illinois to Lake Michigan, upon whose shores, two years later, Father Marquette found a lonely grave. r ONTARIO CHAPTER VIII FRONTEN'AC AXD LA SALLE ^T was after the failure of his attempt to find a way to China by means of the great river he sought, that La Salle's late seigneurie on the island of Montreal came in scorn to be called Lachine ; but he was not the man to give up. When one plan failed, he quickly made another. If the Mississippi, or the Ohio, which he thought the main stream, had no outlet into the Pacific Ocean, it must flow into the Gulf of Mexico. The Spaniards were strong in the south, but if the French could place a fort here and there along the banks of the great river and another at its mouth, a 88 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF CANADA K9 IS la e magnificent domain for their king might be built up in a climate milder than that of Canada. He thought, too, of the magnificent trade in furs that would include the skins of the bison, usually called the buffalo, which then roamed the western prairies in count- less herds. 1672. The newgovernor,Count Frontenac, was just the man to see both the patriotic and the profitable sides of the question as La Salle saw them. He, too, was poor, and as he was fifty-two years of age he had less time to get rich than La Salle who was still under thirty. The first step they took together was the building of the fort, planned by Courcelle, at the eastern end of Lake Ontario, where the artillery barracks of the City of Kingston now stands. Frontenac went there in person with a goodly show of followers in order to impress the Iroquois whom he had told to meet him. He was the first governor of Canada who was able to control those Indians, and he actually seemed to like them, as they did him. Indeed in character Fron- tenac was a bit of an Iroquois himself. He had all the fierce, unbending pride of one ; was brave as their bravest, and cared almost as little for the suffering he caused. Other governors in trying to be 90 A CHILDS friends with the Iroquois had called them '♦ Brothers " ; they let Frontenac address them as ** Children," and scold them, as if they were really his children, when they did not do as he wished. He ruled them by fear, as well as by love, and kept his word to them, both about their presents and their punish- ments. Duchesneau, the iiitendant who came out after Talon, sided with Laval and the Jesuits, who hated Frontenac because he would in no way bend to iheir will, and even chose Recollets for his advisers in religion. They hated La Salle, too, and did not want him to go exploring in the west, because they intended that Held should be kept for the Jesuits ; but La Salle went in spite of them. 1678. He sailed from his post at Fronte- nac, on Lake Ontario, as far as the H umber River, near the present site of Toronto, and then across to the mouth of the Niagara, a winter voyage made with great difticulty ; but La Salle was a man who spared neither himself nor those under him. Being very strong, both in mind and body, he expected too much of others, and that may have been the reason why, from white men at least, he gained more hate than love. Father Hennepin who was on this expedi- tion has left us the first description of the Falls of Niagara, though he exaggerates HISTORY OF CANADA 01 their height. There was also with La Salle his best friend and supporter, Henri de Tonty, an Italian by birth, who had lost a hand in battle before he came to Canada and had a steel one instead, with which he could give the Indians most astonishing blows in a light. 1679. After setting up a storehouse for furs, near the Niagara's mouth, the party went on above the Falls and there built a vessel, which would carry forty-tive tons, called the Griffin. She was the lirst to set sail upon Lake Erie, and it was in the month of August that she started, going on and on, through the Detroit River, up Lake Huron and down Lake Michigan till the head of Green Bay was reached. La Salle decided to send the Grijfin back from there to Niagara with a load of furs to pay his debts. He never saw her again. Whether she was lost in the big storm that came up, or whether the pilot in charge stole the furs and sank her, La Salle never found out. Meanwhile, unheeding cold and hunger, he and his men pushed on, by way of the St. Joseph and Kanakee Rivers, into the country of the Illinois Indians, from whom a branch of the Mississippi was named, and they built a fort upon it, called Crevecoeur. There Tonty was left in charge, while La Salle i :■! A CHILD'S went back to Frontenac for supplies, walking and paddling by turns fifteen hundred miles, through swamps, half-melted snow and drifting ice ; but his labour was in vain, for when he got back to his fort on the Illinois he found it in ruins. The men he left with Tonty had rebelled so soon as his back was turned, and had stolen all they could, while the Iroquois, on the war-path against the Illinois, had completed the destruction. Father Hennepin, whom La Salle had sent with a couple of laymen to explore the Mississippi above the mouth of the Illinois, was taken prisoner by the Sioux Indians, and had many strange adventures before he was rescued by Du Lhut, the most famous conrcur de bois of the time, who was said to be a partner of Frontenac in the fur trade. Tonty and his few faithful followers made their way back to Green Bay, but La Salle did not find them till the next year, 1682, when they all once more set out for the Illinois, reached the Mississippi in canoes on February 6th, and followed its wind- ings for two long nionths till the open water of the Gulf of Mexico was reached. Upon its shores La Salle set up a cross, taking pos- session of the whole country watered by the Mississippi and its tributaries in the name of HISTORY OF CANADA 93 m the King of France, and calling it after him, Louisiana. Returning to the Illinois, La Salle and Tonty chose a new site for a fort — a high rock on the river bank that could be easily defended — anl upon the lowlands round about them settled hundreds of the Illinois, the Miamis, and other tribes of the Algonquin family who looked to the Frenchmen for protection against their common foe, the Iroquois. To keep control of these Indians and of the whole west, it was necessary to have goods for trade ; but when he went back to Canada to get them. La Salle found everything against him. Frontenac, his firm friend, was no longer there, for the king had grown tired of the quarrels between governor and intendant and had recalled them both. The two sent out instead agreed well with one another and also with Laval and the Jesuits. Governor dc la Barre was as weak as Frontenac was strong. He would have liked to make money in the fur trade, but he had no control over the Iroquois who had much control over it. These shrewd warriors were at the very height of their power, having learned their own importance through both French and English trying to keep friends with them. Though they 94 A CHILD'S certainly leaned to the British, they were clever enough not to go over for good to either side, but claimed to be a free people who could do as they pleased in their own country. La Barre was afraid of the Iroquois, and therefore they had no fear of him. He was quite willing that they should go on the war- path against the Illinois, and thereby ruin La Salle, if they would only leave in peace the tribes of the great lakes so that they might bring their beaver skins to Montreal instead of taking them to trade with the English at Albany. Louis XIV. saw before long that the governor of New France was not lit for his post, and brought him home again in three years, sending out an old soldier, Deiionville, in his place. 1685. The new governor, like the old, was friendly to the Jesuit party, and there was peace within the colony, but the Iroquois kept up the war without. Denonville did not act honestly either with them or with the Indians friendly to the French. In making terms with the Five Nations, Frontenac had always said that his aUies of the Algonquin family must be included in every treaty of peace, but Denonville was weak enough to leave them out. Then he made a raid into the Iroquois country, in spite of pretended HISTORY OF CANADA 95 luin of to Into led friendship, and, worse still, he invited a great number of those whom La Salle had coaxed to settle in the neighbourhood, to a feast at Fort Krontenac, and there held them as prisoners, sending the strongest of the men home to France to row in the galleys. 1689. The vengeance of the Iroquois was terrible ; and it fell upon La Salle's old settlement at Lachine. One dark night in August, lifteen hundred painted savages, yelling and shrieking, fell upon the sleeping people, and butchered all the men, women, and children in cold blood, excepting those who were kept alive to be tortured and burned. There were soldiers in camp only three miles away, who marched out to the rescue but were ordered back by Denonville, who had quite lost his head. The country for twenty miles around was laid waste by the Iroquois, and Montreal itself was para- lysed with terror. It was then that a great cry went up for the return of Frontenac, and Frontenac came ; a man of seventy now, but strong of will as of yore, and the only man who was a match for the Iroquois. He was too late to help La Salle, who was lying in a nameless grave near a lonely river in Texas. The great explorer had known it was useless to seek aid for his schemes in Canada so long as his enemies were in power 96 A CHILD'S there, and leaving Tonty in command of the Fort St. Louis, on the Illinois, he had gone to France for support and had got it. With three vessels and a goodly supply of colonists and stores, he sailed for the Gulf of Mexico, meaning to go up the Mississippi from there, but he passed its mouth and landed at last four hundred miles to the westward, on the shores of the present State of Texas. There he built a fort to protect one part of his people, including the women and children, while he with some of the men tried to reach " the fatal river," as they called it, overland. 1687. Disaster had met La Salle from the first of the expedition. Two of his ships had been wrecked, his followers had died of disease or had rebelled against his authority, but still the strong heart of the man would not give way. It was not the first time he had attempted more than he could do. He grew colder and more silent than ever with the men now trudging the dreary wilderness with him, and two of them at length shot him dead, beside a southern branch of the Trinity River. His murderers were afterwards killed by other members of the party, and but five or six of the whole with the help of the Cenis Indians, reached Fort St. Louis in safety. Tonty had taken a trip from it the HISTORY OF CANADA 97 year before down to the mouth of the Mississippi to look for his friend and com- mander, but had found no trace of him. France and England were at war when Frontenac came back to Canada, so that he had an excuse for waging war against the English colonies whom he blamed for stirring up the Iroquois against the French. He brought back with him the Indians who had been sent over to be galley slaves, and thus made peace with the Iroquois. Though he had too few regular soldiers to make a big war and capture New York, as he would have liked to do, he could command the services of a daring band of coureurs dc bois, who would bring in troops of Indians, scarcely more wild than themselves, to do his bidding. With these it was possible to make " the little war,'' by which was meant the springing upon a peaceful settlement by surprise and killing or making prisoners all the people in it, men, women, and children. 1690. One of Frontenac's war parties of two hundred and ten men, half French and half Indians, fell upon the village of Schenectady, in the dead of a winter's night, and within two hours one hundred and fifty souls were killed or taken prisoners. Another band of lifty French and Indians made a raid upon Salmon Falls, a hamlet between li I i 0 A CHILD'S Maine and New Hampshire, where again the sleeping people were made captive if not ilain by the tomahawk or Indian hatchet. The third expedition, one hundred strong, made for Casco Bay, the site of Portland, where the English had a fort into which they fled with their wives and families. On the promise of their lives, they surrendered, but the French broke their promise and turned the helpless folk over to the savages. These raids had the effect Frontenac intended of making the Iroquois afraid to attack the French ; but the English colonists were not Iroquois, and the burning of their villages, the massacre of their people, did not lead them to beg for peace. An expedition sailed from Boston that same year under Sir William Phips, and began by plundering Port Royal, the chief place in Acadia, which was not in a state to defend itself ; but when thirty-four ships appeared before Quebec on the 1 6th of October Frontenac was ready for them. H is post was strong by nature, and he had made it stronger still by placing towers of stone at the weakest parts of the wooden walls. Phips sent him word to give up Quebec within an hour, but he boldly replied that his guns would answer for him ; and answer they did to such purpose that the ships were badly battered while their cannon- HISTORY OF CANADA m and the balls had no effect upon the *' city set on a hill." Having failed to make a landing any- where on their way up the river, the enemy retired in disgust and Canada breathed freely once more. The English succeeded better in getting the Five Nations to go on the war-path, particularly against the settlements between Montreal and Three Rivers, which were most exposed. There is .10 braver story in Canadian history than that of Madeleine de Vercheres, a girl of fourteen, who with her two little brothers of ten and twelve held the fort on her father's seigneurie against forty or fifty Iroquois, for a whole week, keeping up such a show of spirit that the Indians believed the place to be full of soldiers, and were afraid to attack it. Frontenac's last expedition was against the Iroquois. He went himself into the country of the Onondagas at the head of twenty-two hundred men, and so great was the fear of his name, the Indians burned their largest town and fled from before him. One of the most remarkable men of Frontenac's time was Pierre le Moyne d' Iberville, son of the famous Charles le Moyne of Montreal, who had ten other sons, most of whom made their mark in the colony. D'Iberville had been t ^^ined in the French lOO A CHILD'S navy, and most of his daring deeds were done afloat, but he was one of the party that marched six hundred miles on snowshoes and destroyed three out of the five Hudson's Bay factories, or trading posts, on the shores of that vast sea. His next exploit was to capture the stone fort which Sir William Phips had built at Pemaquid to protect New England ; and when that was demolished he sailed off to Newfoundland, where he burned the village of St. John, and many smaller settlements besides, leaving hundreds of poor fishermen homeless in mid-winter. Then he sailed into Hudson's Bay and had a gallant sea-fight with three British ships against his one. D'Iberville beat them all, and destroyed the last fort of the Hudson's Bay Company. He claimed the whole region for France, but it was given back to England by the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697. Frontenac was seventy-seven when he died the next year in the Chateau of St. Louis which he had built on the edge of the cliff at Quebec, and where he so proudly received the messenger of the English in- vader. He had served the land well as a military governor, and had also held his own against bishop and Jesuits. Laval was still in the colony, and he died there about ten years after Frontenac, aged eighty- five ; HISTORY OF CANADA loi but he had been succeeded in his office by Bishop St. VaUier, who in 1693 founded the General Hospital of Quebec. Frontenac lived long enough to see the power of the Iroquois broken, the western tribes firm in their friendship for Canada, the south and west held for France. The dream of keeping the English to the east of the Alleghanies might yet come true. QUEBEC PART THIRD TO THE EXD OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CHAPTER IX NEW FRANCE SPREADS HER WIN'GS ^ URING the thirty years of peace that followed the Treaty of Utrecht, the people about Quebec came to have no ambition be- yond raising large families on their long, narrow farms, which, through frequent subdivision among the children, grew still more narrow, for each, of course, must keep a frontage on the river. Montreal, on the other hand, was the set A CHILD'S HISTORY OF CANADA 103 RY of he le le le- es IS, or le le chief market to which the Indians from the west brought their furs, and with them came also the coiireurs de boiSf who now liked better to be called voyageurs. There was a good deal of traffic with Albany, too, in time of peace, so that Montreal was far more in touch with the outside world than Quebec, and not so easily ruled, either by church or state. Her young men went into the woods every year, in spite of the laws against it, and in spite of the complaints of the mer- chants they left at home that every new post in the western wilds was but a means of lessening the supply of furs brought to Montreal. The governor at Quebec, as military head of the colony, saw the import- ance of these posts in keeping back English settlers. He was often in league with the voyageurs, and shared with them the profits of their trade, so it went on. 1701. Du Lhut had set up a temporary trading post at Detroit in 1686, but it was La Mothe-Cadillac, a gentleman rover, who made a permanent one near the same spot and gathered about him numbers of the Huron and Ottawa Indians from Michili- macinac. His chief end was to keep the English out of the fur trade, and to get into it himself. The Iroquois were now called British sub- 104 A CHILD'S jects, and they were always trying to make the western Indians sell their furs to the English through them, but it was the aim of the French to prevent this, without falling out with the Iroquois. Indian wars in the west would spoil the trade for everybody, and for a time it seemed as if the Outagamies, or Foxes, were being stirred up by the Five Nations, with the English at their back, to put an end to the ten-year-old French fort at Detroit. They would have succeded in their purpose had not six hundred friendly Indians come to the rescue. The Foxes were besieged in their turn and defeated with great loss ; but their spirit was still unbroken, and two years after the attack upon Detroit they made a raid upon La Salle's old friends, the Illinois. There was a flourishing little French colony among them at Kaskaskia, on the Mississippi, and sixteen miles up the river was Fort Chartres, built by the French from Louisiana. It was made first of wood and earth, after- wards of stone, and it held the northern Mississippi to keep the way open between the two wide-apart wings of New France. But the warlike Outagamies gave the district no peace till the vengeance of the French had pursued them to their homes on the far- off Fox River, and so many of the tribe HISTORY OF CANADA i"5 were killed that they had to join themselves to their neighbours, the Sacs. M. de Callieres had been twenty years in Canada, part of the time governor of Mon- treal, before he became governor-general, and he brought to his office much experience in colonial affairs as well as the prudence and common sense that were natural to him. An honourable man and a statesman, he did not copy Frontenac, the governor before him, in making " the little war " upon the outlying English settlements, for he declared that these raids did no good, but harm, to Canada. He would rather have attacked Boston and New York with a fleet from France, but the Heet from France never came, while the fieet from England did. 1711. That was during the time of the next governor. Marquis de Vaudreuil, under whose direction the little war was kept up so vigorously that England, Old and New, felt there would be no peace in America till Quebec was taken. The Heet sent for the purpose was commanded by Admiral Sir Hoveden Walker, and a land force was to proceed to Montreal by way of Lake Champlain in order that Canada might be conquered at one swoop. She had only 3,350 fighting men, so that French, as well as English, were sure the expedition would io6 A CHILD'S succeed ; and well it might, held not the comm.inder-in-chief been utterly unlit for his post. What mattered his array of ships, when not one of his twelve thousand men could pilot them up the St. Lawrence ? Unheeding the thick fog in the river, the admiral stupidly persisted in going forward, against the advice of his officers ; and his vessels, sailing too close to the north shore, ten of them were wrecked on the reefs of Egg Island. Seven hundred men were drowned, but there were still enough left to have gone on and besieged Quebec, had not Walker's courage failed him. The mili- tary commander on board was a coward too, and what was left of the fleet put about and ran home again without doing anything. The land expedition could not act alone, so it too came to nothing ; and the Canadians, looking upon their deliverance as a miracle in answer to prayer, held services of thanks- giving. M. de Callieres had followed Frontenac's method with the Iroquois, of whom there were now a number of Christian converts who had been persuaded by their Jesuit teachers to leave their homes in New York and settle in Canada at Caughnawaga, Lake of the Two Mountaim, and St. Regis. These, of course, did not care, about fight- HISTORY OK CANADA 107 ks- ing their own race, nor did their former friends care about lighting them. Besides the missionaries a French officer, <'alled Joncaire, was of great help to the governor in keeping the Iroquois neutral in the wars between French and English. He had been captured and adopted by the Seneca Indians, had married a squaw, and lived among them like one of them- selves. Joncaire was often able to quiet their anger when it was rising against his countrymen, and when he could not do that he would send word to the French what the Iroquois were about to do. His half-breed son trod in the same path after his father died. The Le Moyne family of Montreal had much inHuence among the Onondaga section of the Five Nations, which, in 1713, became Six Nations by taking in the Tuscaroras from the south. Maricourt and Longueuil, sons of Charles le Moyne, held one after the other the difficult and dangerous post of " consul " to the Onondagas, who christened the former Taouistaouisse (httle bird which is always in motion), and truly the same title would have applied to any one of the Le Moyne brothers, so full of life and enterprise were they. Le Moyne d' Iberville succeeded where La Salle had failed. Henri Tonty had begged -.f io8 A CHILD'S for help to carry on the explorations of his late commander, but he had not D'Iberville's influence at Court, and therefore it was the latter who sailed from France for the mouth of the Mississippi in 1699. He went up " the fatal river " far enough to decide it was really the one sought ; and the best proof was a letter given him by an Indian chief with whom Tonty had left it for La Salle when he came down the stream fourteen years before to look for his unfortunate friend. D' Iberville built his first fort at Biloxi on the Gulf of Mexico, but the next year he changed his quarters to Mobile. His brother, Bienville, a youth of eighteen, who had come out with him as a midshipman, became Lieutenant of the King and after- wards governor of the colony. He founded New Orleans in 17 18. Louis XIV. took a special interest in the new settlement named for him, but as in Canada, he made the mistake of handing over its trade hrst to one man then to a company. The emigrants brought out were not of the right sort. They had no desire to turn farmers, but were keen after gold mines and pearl hsheries. To be sure, the soil about Mobile was the reverse of fertile, but there were game and tish in plenty, and HISTORY OF CANADA lOQ the people need not have starved if they had been willing to work. Year after year numbers of them had to be sent to live with the natives, who were noted for never re- fusing to share their food with the hungry, so long as they had any to share. Bienville's way of managing the Indians was not always honest, but he had many cares, not the least of them being the letters that his companions in office were constantly writing to France, finding fault with him. It was wonderful what little things the king and his ministers liked to hear when they came from one of their servants about another in Louisiana, Acadia, or Canada. La Mothe-Cadillac was governor of Loui- siana for a time and gave a very poor account of the colony. Certainly, the climate was against it, and before long negro slaves were bought to assist in the growing of tobacco and coffee. Thus was introduced another factor, and one not easy to reduce, into a settlement which was already a curious mixture of soldiers, priests, nuns, beggars, convicts, and courenrs de hois. Had King Louis let the Huguenots emigrate there, as they wanted to do, instead of adding their strength to the English colonies, the whole valley of the Mississippi would in time have filled up with a hardy and industrious popula- '{ H. no A CHILD'S tion, more likely than a few scattered forts to have held it for France. Since the beginning of the century the walls of Quebec had been strengthened little by little, but they did not yet enclose the whole town, and Vaudreuil was anxious to com- plete them ; but his death in 1725 put a stop to the building for a time. He had served Canada for twenty-one years as governor- general and had been governor of Montreal for seventeen years before that, so he knew the colony well. In his time many ships were built at Quebec for trade with Montreal, Cape Breton, and Prince Edward Island. Card money in place of coins had a run for a couple of years and came in again during the term of the next governor, the Marquis de Beauharnois, who also ruled Canada for twenty-one years. He was a naval officer, fifty years old, when he came out, and the customary squabbling between governor and intendant continued, for indeed the king's minister in France never wanted the two to be friends, because the one was most useful as a spy upon the other. The population of the colony at that time was almost thirty thousand. Beauharnois did not try to subdue the spirit of enterprise which was abroad in New France, but did what he could to profit HISTORY OF CANADA III by it. He was one of a trading company which built a post at Lake Pepin, on the u]^per waters of the Mississippi, to collect furs from the Indians of that far-distant region, and he was also a firm supporter of the most noted explorer of his time, Pierre Gautier de la Verendrye, son of the governor at Three Rivers. He held a small post at Nepigon on Lake Superior, and was thus brought into contact with the Indians from the far west, who told him such wonderful tales of the lakes and rivers in that vast un- explored region, Verendrye thought he might, by one or other of them, reach the Pacific Ocean. 1732. His three sons and a nephew went with him on his expedition, and there were also a number of voyagenrs, Indian guides, and the Jesuit missionary, without whom no exploring party was thought to be complete. To take a priest along was a sign that they were not mere coiireurs de bois, going for their own good, but had at heart the good of the Indians with whom they might trade. The company followed the tedious canoe route with many portages, that took them by way of the Rainy Lake and Rainy River into the Lake of the Woods, where one of Veren- drye's sons was killed in a fight with those " Iroquois of the West," the Sioux. His 112 A CHILD'S nephew died soon afterwards, and most of his men were rebellious and troublesome, as in the case of La Salle, and partly from the same cause — the enterprise was not supported in Canada, and the promised supplies were not sent. More than once Verendrye had to journey back to Montreal to make arrange- ments with his creditors. The undertaking was at his own expense, and the only way he could hope to support it was by the fur trade. To control that it was necessary to build fortified storehouses here and there along his route, and to keep these provided with food for the few men left in charge, and with goods to supply the Indians. One such fort was set up on Rainy Lake, another on the Lake of the Woods, two on Lake Winnipeg, and one each on Lake Manitoba and the Assiniboine River. These caught much of the trade that had hitherto gone to the English on Hudson's Bay. 1742. Before this time the spare strength of the Hudson's Bay Company had been spent in sending out ships in search of a north-west passage to the Paciiic through the ice-floes of the Arctic Ocean, and the Indians had brought their furs to the Bay of their own accord. Now that the French had made their way into the region and were likely to disturb the traffic, the Hudson's HISTORY OF CANADA 1X3 fen a Ihe of Ich sre 's Bay Company branched out to meet the Indians — first one hundred and fifty miles up the Albany River, then further and further till, before the century closed, their posts were dotted over the whole North-west. Verendrye was fifty-seven when his sons left him at Fort Rouge on the Assiniboine, the future site of Winnipeg, to make the remarkable tour upon which they were gone for a whole year. They had but two men with them — Canadians — and they visited among strange tribes of Indians on the banks of the Missouri River in the present State of Dakota. 1743. Going as far as the base of the Big Horn Range in Wyoming, they were the first white men, so far as recorded, to see the Rocky Mountains. After his father's death, in 1749, one of the sons explored the River Saskatchewan. Like La Salle, these brave voyagcurs gained nothing for themselves. Beauharnois had favoured their enterprise, but the next gover- nor. La Jonquiere, was a miser, and to him was joined Intendant Bigot, who had no objections to spending money, but it must be for his own pleasure or profit. The steal- ing from king and from people alike that began in their time was kept on until Canada was lost. The forts that the Verendryes had 114 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF CANADA built, the furs they had collected were all handed over to strangers in the pay of these new rulers, and the pioneers who had led f ; way into the great North-west died very poor. a p NOVA SCOTIA CHAPTER X THE FIGHT FOR NOVA SCOTIA ^T was on account of being so easy to reach from the sea that Nova Scotia, the Acadian peninsula, changed masters every few years. The settlements on the St. Law- rence could be invaded from New England only by a long and tedious march through thick, tangled woods ; or by an equally long and tedious sail up the great river of Canada, where pilots were needed and where the warlike people along the banks were well able to fight for their homes. Perched on a rock, Quebec could look down with scorn upon the foe ; but Port Royal was poorly defended, and the Acadians were not so hardy nor so "5 ■ ii6 A CHILDS enterprising as the Canadians, not having had the same amount of Indian fighting nor of fur-trading adventures in the far west. The men of New England, placed as they were on the Atlantic coast, became bolder by sea than by land, and found their way to Nova Scotia both in peace and in war. In the one case they would trade with the Acadians ; in th . other they would capture their forts. In the latter event, an expedi- tion would be sent down from Canada to drive out the invaders ; or the country would change hands again, when peace was de- clared. Both France and England used Acadia as a sort of balance, to be thrown in on this side, or en that, when the results of the war in other pax's of the world were being weighed and settled. That was what happened in 1667, when, by the Treaty of Breda, the present Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and a part of Maine became once more the property of Louis XIV. of France. There were but few settle- ments besides those along the Bay of Fundy, and Port Royal was the only place that had a stone fort and a garrison ; therefore who- ever took Port Royal considered that he took the whole country. Sir William Phips did so, in 1690, but he had neither the men nor the means to hold the place after he had HISTORY OF CANADA 117 taken it, and a French governor came back the next year. If there were few white men in Acadia, there were plenty of red, mostly Abenakis and Micmacs, among whom the Jesuits had been at work so long they had them com- pletely under control. The Indians were taught that it was their Christian duty to kill the English whenever and wherever they could, and whether or not there was peace between France and England. The priests often led them in person on their raids and persuaded them to save their prisoners for a ransom, instead of torturing and burning them. They made little other attempt to civilise their flocks, thinking it unwise to teach them to read and write, or even to speak French. If the natives cleared the ground and settled down upon farms, like white men, it would not be so easy to start them off on the war-path against the English. Knowing the Indian character, the Jesuits governed them through their fears and their jealousy. The Abenakis at times grew tired of the war and would have been glad to Hve at peace with the English. The blankets, hatchets, knives, and so on, they gave in exchange for furs were cheaper and wore better than the French articles, trade being freer in New r Ii8 A CHILD'S I! England than New France. But the French were determined there should be no peace, and when the Abenakis showed signs of weakening they were spurred on to a new attack which the English would revenge when they could, and so keep the trouble alive. Orders came from King Louis himself that the Indians must be taught that they could make a better living hunting the Eng- lish than hunting the beaver, for if once the borders were quiet, settlers from the south would push over into Acadia, as the French said they were doing already ; for there was a difference of opinion about the boundary line. The English thought they had a right to the country as far north as the river St. Croix, while the French claimed it as far south as the Kennebec ; and in the disputed part lived and reigned the bold Baron de St. Castin, at Pentegoet, on the Penobscot. He had married the daughter of an Indian chief and was a mighty man among his wife's relations, whom he often led to ** the little war" against the English, though he was not above making money by trading with the ** Bastonnais" in times of peace. The Marquis de Vaudreuil, governor at Quebec, who had set himself to ruin New England, thought he could kill a sturdy tree HISTORY OF CANADA 119 by lopping off a few of its outermost twigs. He had one great advantage over the Eng- lish colonies, in that he could, whenever he chose, call out every able-bodied man in Canada to go to war ; and they would have for officers young men of good family, trained in fighting, who thought it beneath their dignity to do anything else. Indeed there was little else for them to do, if they wanted to advance themselves, for trade of every kind was kept among a few, and all the civil offices were given to favourites from France. The English colonists, on the other hand, though far more in number than the Cana- dians, were divided up into little repub- lics, each jealous of one another and of any interference from the mother country. Virginia, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania being beyond the reach of French invasion, thought that Massachusetts could look after her own borders ; and the Assembly of that colony was slow in voting money, even for her own defence. Her soldiers were mostly farmers who ran from the plough to a block- house when they heard of the Indians coming ; but generally they got no warning. 1704. Besides the smaller raids, when two or three families were taken at a time, and their houses burned, the little war which Vaudreuil kept up, included attacks such as T ■ A CHILD'S the one upon Dccrficld on the Connecticut River, at that time the most northerly settle- ment of Massachusetts. Three hundred Canadians and Indians went from Montreal by way of Lake Champlain and the Onion River, and surprised the Decrheld people in their beds on a wuitor night. In one hour thirty-eight were killed, and one hundred and six taken prisoners, to endure the long tramp of two hundred and lifty miles back to Canada. Two dozen of them, women, children, and old people, died from cold and hunger, or were knocked on the head by the way, when they could not keep up with their captors. The survivors were divided among the villages of so-called Christian Indians, to work like slaves till their time came to be exchanged for French prisoners. Some of the children were never given up, but re- mained savages the rest of their lives, for- getting even the English language. It was not an Acadian party which had done this particular deed, but it was Acadia that could be struck in return ; and Massa- chusetts, rising in her wrath, sent Colonel Benjamin Church thither with seven hun- dred men in whale-boats. He began with a raid upon the St. Castin place on the Penobscot, and then sailed to the head of the Bay of Fundy, burned Grand Pre and HISTORY OF CANADA »I Bcaubassin and took a number of prisoners to keep for exchange. Three years later another expedition was sent out to take Port Royal, but failed. 1708. When Haverhill, on the Merrimac, was devastated as Deerhcld had been, Massachusetts stirred up New York and New Hampshire to help her seek revenge. A fleet sailed from Boston to Port Royal and besieged it for a week, when the French, knowing that their walls were out of repair and that they were as short of food as of powder and shot, gave up their Acadian capital. It was never theirs again, though for long they hoped and planned, by open means and secret, to win it back. 1713. The name Port Royal was changed to Annapolis Royal, in honour of Queen Anne, and by the Treaty of Utrecht, Acadia and Newfoundland were handed over to England, while France was left with a few islands in the Gulf, of which the largest were those now called Prince Edward and Cape Breton. The last was considered the most important, as a gateway to the St. Lawrence, and the French determined to place a strong fortress upon one of its harbours, from which vessels could make raids upon the New England coasts during the next war, and would also have a good ■TP 122 A CHILD'S chance to retake Acadia. A harbour in Cape Breton would not be ice-bound for Quebec, and take refuge half the year, Hke that of fishing-boats could always there. Louisbourg, the stronghold was christened, and more than a million pounds were spent upon its for Ifications, which were twenty- five years \n. building. It was not an attractive site for a settlement, the ground being marshy and the climate damp, but the people of Newfoundland and Acadia who did not want to live under British rule were mvited to go there. The poor fishermen of Placentia consented ; but the Acadians were too comfortable where they were, and did not care for hewing down trees, when they had made clear fields for themselves by simply building dykes to keep back the high tides of the Bay of Fundy. It would have been better for England either to have insisted upon their going, or to have sent enough troops among them to pro- tect them from their late masters ; but Eng- land's eyes were elsewhere. It did not '^uit her to have a strong colony grow up on Cape Breton while Nova Scotia was left empty, and therefore the Acadians were treated kindly to keep them where they were. For years they were excused from HISTORY OF CANADA 123 taking the oath of allegiance to the British sovereign, and their young folks grew up with the idea that no allegiance was neces- sary. They called themselves the '* Neutral French/' but they were not that at all, for they secretly gave help to their countrymen in every wa^ that they could, going so far as to disguise themselves as Indians in order to light against the English, when war broke out once more. 1744. The commander at Louisbourg sent a force at once to take possession of Canso, but Annapolis held out against him. Governor Shirley, of Massachusetts, had made up his mind that there would be no peace for lis colony until Louisbourg was taken, and he resolved to take it, though he had but a few British ships to help him and the troops, which for once the other colonies contributed readily, were quite untrained. Four thousand farmers, fisher- men, carpenters, and blacksmiths, with officers who knew no more about war than did they themselves, would not appear to have much chance against that formidable fortress which had been built by the best engineer of the time and had a garrison of thirteen hundred French regulars. 1745. The command of the EngHsh was given to WiUiam Pepperrell, a good-tem- 124 A CHILD'S h I i'. pered merchant with a sound business head who knew how to manage men and was popular with his soldiers — a great matter in an army of that sort where every man thought himself as good as his neighbour. The kind of work they had to do when at length they forced a landing upon the island of Cape Breton, severely tried their manliness, but it was not found wanting. Heavy guns had to be dragged on sleds through the marsh, under cover of the night ; but once within firinfj distance of the walls they did good service, and the sallies from the fort to take them were stoutly beaten back. Victory for once fell to the unlearned. The commander at Louisbourg had not been so well chosen as most French commanders were. He foolishly gave up the Grand Battery, facing the entrance to the harbour, and its guns were turned upon the fort. The British ships waiting without captured a French one trying to get in with supplies ; and the garrison was short of powder. After a siege of seven weeks New England gained Louisbourg. A fleet that sailed from France the next year was dispersed by storms and could not retake it, while an attempt on Annapolis failed likewise. 1748-1749. The great rejoicing in Boston HISTORY OF CANADA 125 when the fall of Louisbourg became known was turned to bitter anger when the fortress was coolly given back to France in the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. It was still there to menace Nova Scotia ; and to act as a guard, in some degree, a fortified town was built by the English on Chebucto Harbour. This was called Halifax and made the capital of Nova Scotia. Started after the French manner by a royal decree, colonists were sent out to it, and in a couple of years there were four thousand of them. Around the dwellings was built a wooden wall and a square stone fort was set on the hill. Though they had now been British sub- jects for forty years and had enjoyed far more liberty than the French had ever given them, the Acadians kept on being insolent whenever France seemed likely to win back their country, humble when they feared Britain held it for good. Some of them had gone to Prince Edward Island to be under French rule ; but they still outnum- bered the English in Nova Scotia and looked for support in their disloyalty to the French fort at Beausejour. The same means that had been used with the Indians were employed to keep the Acadians true to France, notably the Abbe le Loutre, supposed to be a missionary to the Micmacs, T 126 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF CANADA but in reality an active agent of the Quebec Government. An ignorant people, devout Roman Catholics, dreaded his threats of putting them out of the Church even more than his threats of letting loose his Indians upon them if they ventured to obey the Enghsh. They had, on the other hand, been well warned what would happen if they con- tinued their double-dealing, but they paid no attention, feeling sure that such easy- going masters would never have the heart to turn them out of their homes. That was what happened at last, however, and a cruel measure it undoubtedly was, but not half so cruel as the Indian ravages from which New England had long suffered, and for which the French were chiefly to blame. 1755. The British began by taking Beausejour, and soon afterwards all the men living in its neighbourhood were shut up in the fort until such time as they could be carried away with their .wives and families. The men about Grand Pre were collected, unarmed, in the church ; and in Annapolis and other districts the same plan was followed. About six thousand souls in all were thus captured, taken on board ship and distributed among the different English colonies. ONTARIO CHAPTER XI CANADA HOLDS HER OWN N board of the French fleet which was scattered in 1746, was the new governor for Canada, Admiral de la Jonquiere, so he did not arrive at that time ; nor had he any better luck the next year, when the ship in which he sailed was taken by the English. To fill the gap at Quebec, the Comte de la GaHssoniere was appointed, a man with a small, misshapen body, but a large, straight mind, of which the colony for two years had the benefit. His first strengthen all the trading ireat lakes : and his second was postj 127 T 128 A CHILD'S was to send out Celoron de Bienville in 1749, to take possession of the valley of the Ohio. This he did by burying five plates of lead at the foot of five different trees throughout the district between the head waters of the Alleghany and the banks of the Miami and Maumee Rivers. Each plate bore an inscription to the effect that Celoron in this manner claimed the whole country for the King of France ; but what cared the English traders for Celoron and his boundary lines or his plates of lead ? They came over the mountains from Pennsylvania and Vir- giniri -it the rate of three hundred in a year. Their ..rnners were not so good as those of the French, but their wares were better and cheaper, and on that account most of the natives put up with the ill-usage they got from them and from the land-grabbers who followed in their train. The French had forts now all the way between Montreal and New Orleans, begin- ning with the one at Ogdensburg, then called La Presentation, where the Abbe Picquet had a mission to the Iroquois. On Lake Ontario had been built Fort Rouille (Toronto) and Niagara, to counteract Oswego, by which the English had nearly ruined the trade of Frontenac. Not beyond portaging distance from Presqu'ile, on Lake HISTORY OF CANADA 129 Erie's southern shore were the head waters of the Alleghany River. Le Boeuf was built there and Venango some miles farther down the stream. These two were the forts that roused the wrath of the governor of Virginia in 1754, and made him send the afterwards famous George Washington to request their commander to withdraw, which, it is need- less to say, he did not do ; and at a later skirmish between Washington's men and the French were fired the opening shots of the Seven Years' War. The Marquis Duquesne, who had come out to replace La Jonquiere in 1752, was, like him, an officer in the French navy. His bearing was cold and proud, so that he found little favour with the Canadians, but he honestly did his best, both for them and for the king, his master. Defying the fortified trading posts, the British kept on pushing over into the rich lands of the Ohio, with a broad front that was very unlike the French occupation of a terri- tory. As Duquesne himself put it to an Iroquois : " Are you ignorant of the dif- ference between the King of England and the King of France ? Go, see the forts that our king has established, and you will see that you can still hunt under their very walls. They have been placed for your 130 A CHILD'S advantage in places which you frequent. The English, on the contrary, are no sooner in possession of a place than the game is driven away. The forest falls before them as they advance, and the soil is laid bare, so that you can scarce find the wherewithal to erect shelter for the night." 1764. Both sides saw that the point for controlling the whole Ohio valley was where the Alleghany and the Monongahela join to form " the be?utiful river," and the English hiid begun to build a wooden fort there when they were driven out by the French, who made a solid one of stone, named after the governor who had planned it, Fort Duquesne. In times of peace the superior number of the English coloni' f If between which the colony and the army were divided. Hitherto the governor of Canada had been also its sole military commander, and Vaudreuil did not like to share the charge with Montcalm, especially when he got orders from France to submit to the general's judgment in military matters. Vau- dreuil was an honest man, but weak, and not shrewd enough to see through M. Bigot, who kept friendly with him by flattering his vanity and was left to make money as he chose. The intendant entertained right royally, but the people had to pay for it. Though small in stature, Montcalm had a handsome face, and there was all the fire of youth in his flashing black eyes, though he was now forty-seven years old. Like many southerners, he had a hot, impulsive temper, and needed a clever, cool-headed friend at his side to keep him out of trouble, but even Levis often failed to keep the peace between him and Vaudreuil. The governor was in- cHned to think too highly of himself and his native colony ; the general was too apt to care only for the honour of the king's troops and his own advancement in the armv 1769. Montcalm knew tha^ Q' d not withstand the blows 0 an i, and that if he shut up his s .lers \ hin aie HISTORY OF CANADA 149 le army ada had ider, and e charge he got to the ers. Vau- i^eak, and M. Bigot, ttering his ley as he ned right ay for it. calm had a the fire of though he ,ike many \Q temper, friend at , but even e between or was in- elf and his too apt to ng's troops rmv a ain aie walls they would very soon run short of food ; so in the spring, when it was known that the English were moving upon Quebec, he laid out his camp from the St. Charles to the Montmorenci. That would prevent the enemy from getting to the weak side of the town, where the land slopes down to the St. Charles River ; the high side next the St. Lawrence was thought to need little or no protection. There were more men up in arms against Canada than her whole population, all told ; but with little ground for hope, to the last she did not despair, having faith that her religion would save her, or that France would send help. General Amherst's part in the campaign was played upon Lake Champlain, where he spent the whole season building vessels and repairing forts, as the French blew them up and left them. They still held out at Ile-aux- Noix, a well-fortified island in the Richelieu, and Amherst appeared to be in no hurry to dislodge them in order to advance to the help of General Wolfe before Quebec. It seemed as if the latter were not going to succeed in taking the capital that year, for the summer wore on and nothing was accom- plished but the burning of villages and the laying waste of the country on both sides of the St. Lawrence. i m V- 1 1 150 A CHILD'S The British fleet of seventy ships had come up the river in June, guided by pilots decoyed on board by the hoisting of French colours ; but Montcalm thought Wolfe had acted foolishly in dividing his forces. Pan of the English army was encamped on the other side of the Montmorenci from the French ; part on the island of Orleans, and part at Point Levi. Could the French general have spared the men, he might have attacked any one of these sections before the others could have sent help ; but Mont- calm had no troops to spare. Eight hundred were off with Levis in Montreal, watching for the advance of Amherst, and three thousand were with Bougainville, guarding the river above the town against a possible landing of troops from the British ships which had passed upward. Montcalm must play the waiting game — must lie low and see if he could not tempt Wolfe into attacking him. That is what Wolfe had done on the 31st of July, and been badly beaten. His men landed on the Beauport shore, and tried to climb the hill to get at the French camp ; but had it not been for a storm of wind and rain that kept the foe from seeing them, the whole British force wouid have been slain. As it was, they retreated to their boats with heavy loss. ; J liii HISTORY OF CANADA 151 When the month of September came the Canadians began to take heart. True, their capital was in ruins, for the EngHsh batteries at Point Levi had shelled it furiously — a useless destruction of property that brought no nearer the possession of the town. If the enemy did not get in soon they would have to give up the siege for the season, or their ships would be caught in the ice and their men left without food in a hostile country. On the night of the 12th Montcalm took little rest. He felt sure that the English, with such power in their hands and with so daring a leader, would not leave the country without making a last desperate attempt to take Quebec. He walked about his encampment till nearly dawn, and then was roused from a troubled sleep by the booming of big guns along the Beauport shore. Were the English trying again to land there? The question was answered by news that reached him at six o'clock and sent him spurring his horse towards the bridge of boats that was laid across the St. Charles. From there he saw, only too plainly, a body of redcoats drawn up in line upon the plains of Abraham, the high land within a mile of Quebec. Was it a squad cr a whole army, and how did they get 152 A CHILD'S there ? Probably the gallant general never learned how the British had dropped down the river from their ships above the town ; how they had made the French sentries think their boats were some expected pro- visions ; how they had climbed the heights by a path so steep that only a small guard had been thought necessary to defend it, and that was soon overpowered. Fortune favoured Wolfe, and frowned upon Montcalm. The latter should have waited till Vaudreuil sent up the rest of the troops from Beauport ; till Bougainville came from Cap Rouge to attack the thirty-five hundred British in tne rear ; but he thought it would be a mistake to delay until more of the English got up the cliff and had time to dig trenches. They were already between him and his supplies. So with his forty-five hundred men, white-coated regulars, Cana- dians, and Indians, Montcalm passed through one of Quebec's gates and out by another, to meet his fate. He barely gave his men time to take breath till he hurled them against the foe, and of course they advanced in bad order, while the British stood firm, and reserved their fire till the French were near enough to receive it with deadly effect. Within twenty minutes all was over, and the French HISTORY OF CANADA 153 take foe, rder, ;rved ough ithin ench in full retreat, chased back to the city gates, or over the rough hillside down to the bridge of boats by the redcoats and kilted High- landers. Without a leader strong enough to rally them, they left their camp in disorder, and never stopped their flight till they had reached the natural fort of Jacques Cartier, thirty miles up the St. Lawrence. Wolfe and Montcalm both lost their lives in that bloody skirmish ; the one dying on the field, the other living long enough to be supported into the town on his horse. Montcalm was buried in a grave made by the bursting of a shell in the chapel of the Ursuline Convent ; Wolfe's remains were taken home on a warship, and there is a noble monument to him in Westminster Abbey. 1 If m , i! ) MANITIDBA CHAPTER XIII THE FIRST FEW YEARS OF BRITISH RULE HEN news of the battle of September 13th reached the Chevalier de Levis in Monti cal, he lost no time in starting for Jacques Cartier to meet the defeated army. The death of Montcalm had given him the command under Vaudreuil, and his presence put new life into the soldiers. Even the governor began to t^»ink he had left Quebec in too great a huri_^, and was ready to march back again. New France was not lost in one battle, nor was even its capital, so long as 154 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF CANADA 155 the victorious British could be kept without the walls. Bougainville, bitterly regretting that he had not known his dearly loved general was in such dire need of his help on that fatal morning, still held out at Cap Rouge, and was now moving towards the town with his cavalry. Every man carried a sack of biscuits across his saddle for the relief of the starving garrison ; but they came too late. Vaudreuil in leaving had told Ramesay, the commandant of Quebec, to make the best terms he could with the enemy ; and when there seemed to be no help coming from any quarter, the town surrendered and the British marched in. Levis knew that he was playing a losing game ; that unless there was a revolution in France, to put the management of her affairs into other hands, Canada was lost to her for ever. Still he resolved to put a stout heart to a steep hill, and for the honour of his country try to save at least a part of her American possessions. His army made many plans for the retaking of Quebec in the spring ; but meanwhile it was held by a garrison of seven thousand men under General Murray. Like Wolfe, he had been in the front rinks at the battle of September 13th, but the harder task was left to him ,1*: ^t :v r.. it 11 I: il 156 A CHILD'S of keeping that which Wolfe had taken. The town was in ruins. There was barely a roof left to cover his soldiers ; the winter was coming on ; the country people were unfriendly, and could not be relied upon to bring in provisions, while Murray was short of funds to pay for them. He might have given out paper money, as the French rulers had done for years — paper they never meant to change into coin — but the sturdy, honest young Scotchman preferred to borrow money from his own soldiers. It was surprising how much the thrifty Highlanders were able to lend him. A part of that kilted regiment was quar- tered in the Ursuline Convent, one of the few buildings in the town left standing, and they did so many friendly services for the nuns, hauling and cutting wood, drawing water for them, that the good sisters in return knitted them long stockings to draw up over their bare knees. None of the soldiers had clothes warm enough to suit so severe a climate, and there was much sickness among them, which the hospital nuns did their best to relieve. The habitants held aloof from the town for a time. They would not make friends with the new-comers, feeling sure that in the spring France would send out a fleet HISTORY OF CANADA 157 and an army to claim her own again. General Levis, in his winter camp at Jacques Cartier, was kept well posted in Quebec news. He had spies even among Murray's own soldiers, and those of the townsfolk who had been induced to come back and try to rebuild their ruined homes, lost no chance of sending him word about the great amount of sickness in the garrison, the small amount of money and provisions. Firewood was an urgent necessity for the five months of a Quebec winter, and to procure it the British soldiers had to go to Ste. Foye, two miles and a half from the gates, and draw it in on sleds, to which they harnessed themselves. There were bands of Indians always prowling about, intent on cutting off some of these logging parties, so that each had to have an extra guard of soldiers. Several skirmishes took place during the winter with scouts from Levis's army, but both sides looked anxiously to the spring for the final settlement of the question, '' Who shall own Canada ? " General Murray's was called military rule, but it was different from what usually passes under that name, though punishment followed crime a good deal more quickly than is possible with a civil government. The " new subjects " were protected in their f 158 A CHILD'S . i fl |. i *i rights of property, allowed to worship as they pleased, and the Protestant emigrants from the English colonies were kept from lording it over them. Murray struck the keynote for the treatment of the French- Canadians by their new rulers. The snows that had lain all winter in the narrow, steep streets and among the blackened walls of the town began at length to yield to the A^iril sunshine. The ice- bridge between the town and Point Levi opposite gave way on the 23rd, and the large masses of ice that came floating down the river seemed the forerunners of Levis and his men. Murray sent all the Canadians out of the town. If he were to be besieged he could not feed them, and, besides, it was not safe to have a strong party within the walls friendly to a strong enemy without. 1760. The French army came in boats from Montreal till they were within thirty-iive miles of Quebec, when, finding the outposts well guarded, they ma"ched the rest of the way by land, approaching the town from Lorette and Ste. Foye, the sloping side next the valley of the St. Charles. Murray thought it best to march out of the gates and attack Levis on the 28th of April, before his men should have time to dig trenches or even to get rested after their ^ong tramp through the HISTORY OF CANADA 159 half-melted snow. So many of his garrison were in hospital, he had less than four thousand to take out to battle, while Levis had nearly double the number ; but the English had the advantage in cannon, and also in holding the higher ground, where there were rough hillocks for protection. The fight lasted for two hours. There were more men engaged on each side and more men in proportion killed than at the Septem- ber battle in the same place, but the result was different This time it was the British who were beaten and who retreated into the town in disorder. A third of their number were slain at this battle of Ste. Foye, and Levis now laid siege to the town. It would have been better for his army if he had kept away from Quebec till sure of the support of French ships, several of which had been caught in the ice and wintered at Gaspe. His victory went for nothing two weeks after the battle, when the weary watchers in the town saw the first sail of the season rounding the island of Orleans. The frigate was afraid to show her colours, not knowing if the British had been able to hold Quebec through the winter, but when she drew close enough to see that the red flag, and not the white, floated from the citadel, she hoisted the same and fired a I... i II : :! i6o A CHILD'S salute, to which every gun in the town replied. Levis's men in the trenches heard the firing and knew that the game was up for them. They retreated as they had come, back to Montreal. Bougainville still held the post at Ile-aux-Noix, but to it was advancing General Haldimand from Lake Champlain, and, knowing that the British were too strong for them, the French left the island fort and made for Montreal. Murray had done well in Quebec ; he did even better on his memorable jo irney to Montreal with twenty-two hundred men to meet General Amherst, who was coming down from Lake Ontario, but took time to destroy the fort at Ogdensburg on the way. Landing here and there along the river, Murray assured the inhabitants of satety and protection, provided they stayed quietly in their homes, which most of them, having had enough of fighting, were only too glad to do. The forces of the British — seventeen thousand in all — had now gathered about Montreal, from the east, the south, and the west, and Levis, with his gallant two thousand troops of the line, could do naught but sur- render. Late in the autumn the last of the French soldiers were shipped backito France, and a few of the seigneurs and their families HISTORY OF CANADA i6i town firing them, ack to e post ancing nplain, re too island he did ney to d men coming time to le way. ; river, ety and ietly in having 30 glad v^enteen I about md the lousand )ut sur- of the France, aniilies who did not want to live under British rule went with them. Bigot and his crew left to enjoy the fortunes they had made in Canada, but they were brought to trial and severely punished. A later stand was made for France in America by the Indians of the west. The English had never taken pains to be friends with them, as the French had done, and now that the latter were driven out of Canada, tlie former were no longer afraid of the \ed men and cared less than ever about their friendship. Sir William Johnson, living among the Iroquois, alone saw the danger, and warned his countrymen to keep on holding councils with the Indians and giving them presents ; but none listened to him. The French still held Louisiana, as well as Fort Chartres on the Mississippi. From there voyagetirs engaged in the fur trade roved the western lands ; and they told the Indians that their great father, the King of France, was but asleep ; presently he would awake and drive out the English from all the forts they occupied. It did not take much persuasion to induce the Indians to assist in the driving, and a widespread plot was laid to win back every post in the west. 1763. The leader in the movement was an Ottawa warrior, called Pontiac, who on M -i<|£v l63 A CHILD'S It' the 9th of May attacked the fortified village of Detroit and besieged it with eight hundred and twenty men for more than five months. This was a remarkable feat for Indians, who excel in the more rapid warfare of surprise and retreat, but rarely have the patience for a long siege. Within the enclosure of Fort Michilimackinac, as at Detroit, there were a number of small houses, built there at the time when it was not safe to settle with- out. The homes of a later date were outside, and the Canadian traders and half-breeds who lived in them were on good terms with the scores of Ojibwa and Ottawa Indians camping near by. These warriors invited the British garrison to look on at a game of lacrosse between themselves and a party of Sacs who had just arrived from their hunting-grounds on the Wisconsin River. The English, off their guard, sauntered out of the fort gates, leaving them open, and some squaws sauntered in. During the excitement of the play, the ball was tossed close to an entrance, and the screaming pack of players rushed into the fort, seized their guns and hatchets, which the squaws had hidden beneath their blankets, and massacred every man, woman, and child they could find. About the same time, according to the plan HISTORY OF CANADA 163 llage idrcd nths. , who rprise ZQ for Fort were ;re at I with- utside, breeds s with ndians invited game party n their River, ed out !n, and [ng the tossed Reaming seized squaws ^ts, and child Ithe plan of Pontiac, the smaller western posts also fell into the hands of the Indians. Union had given them a fleeting strength, and they used it as savages will — in scalping, burning, torturing, even eating their captives. The forts at Sandusky, St. Joseph, Presqu'ile, Le Boeuf, Venango, Miami on the Maumee, and another on the Wabash, were all taken ; but Detroit still held out, though bands of Indians, victors in other places, came to increase the number of the besiegers. Though he stayed in New York, Sir Jeffrey Amherst was still commander-in-chief of the forces in Canada, but they numbered many less than they had done at the close of the Seven Years' War, most of them having been ordered home. To Colonel Henry Bouquet, a Swiss soldier of fortune fighting for England, is due the chief credit of putting a stop to the war in the Ohio valley. He had been second in command to Forbes in the expedition which changed Fort Duquesne into Fort Pitt, and when the same place was in danger from the Indians Amherst sent him to its relief with some of the Black Watch and a few rangers. After a hard-fought light he succeeded in beating the red allies at a place called Bushy Run. Colonel Bradstreet, the same who had de- III i i64 A CHILD'S !( I stroyed Fmntenac, was now sent to the relief of Detroit ; but he had not Bouquet's courage and skill in dealing with the Indians, and it was not till Sir William Johnson took the helm that the war was really brought to a close in 1766. If the Iroquois had taken part in it, the results would have been far more serious for Canada ; but Sir Will'am had kept so firm a hold upon them that only the Senecas joined the remarkable league. Louisiana had now been ceded to Spain by the French, who, having no longer an interest in the affairs of the continent, let the Indians alone. Canada numbered seventy thousand souls when she came under British rule, and of these Quebec had seven and Montreal nine thousand. The settlements on the St. Lawrence reached as far down as Rimouski on the south shore and Murray Bay on the north. A change of government could not long depress a light-hearted people, especially when the change gave them more freedom than the^ had ever enjoyed. There was not a printing press in the colony until after the conquest, so that books were scarce ; but the people did not miss them, for very few were able to read or write. The Halifax Gazette had a run for a few months in 1752, but was not published regu- HISTORY OF CANADA i6s larly till eight years later, and Quebec had her first newspaper in 1764. British rule brought free trade in the East, but the Hudson's Bay Company had the sole right to buy furs in the North-west. That fact did not stop adventurers from striking out into the wilderness, chiefly from Michili- mackinac, and getting skins from the Indians, to whom they gave far too much liquor in exchange. They did not deal honestly with the natives either, and much disorder followed which hurt the business of the Hudson's Bay Company. But the Company roused itself to extend its bounds to the far north, and sent out Samuel Hearne, who explored the Coppermine River and was the first white man known to have got within the Arctic Circle (1769). ! mi n i ! il t n QUEBEC CHAPTER XIV THE UNITED EMPIKE LOYALISTS 1766. Sir Guy Carleton, who suc- ceeded General Murray as governor of Canada, had been a personal friend of Wolfe and his comrade-in-arms during the campaign of 17,^9 He had also spent the hrst hard winter with Murray in Quebec, and fought in the battle of April 28th, so that, besides being a tried and capable soldier, he knew something of Canada and the Canadians, and he liked them well. He worked hard for the passing of the Quebec Act in the British Parliament, by which the government of Canada was placed once more in the hands of a governor and council, as it had been under the French, and not into the hands of an assembly of representa- 166 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF CANADA 167 ■-r 10 suc- nor of end of during o spent Quebec, j8th, so capable ida and ;11. He Quebec ich the d once council, M\d not resenta- tives, as the English who were moving in wanted it to be — an assembly in which no Roman Catholic could have a seat, and by which therefore the few Protestants would rule. Such a Parliament, the first on Canadian soil, had met in Halifax in 1758, but the Nova Scotians were mostly British or New Englanders, educated up to the point of know- ing how to govern by their own representa- tives, as the French Canadians were not. By the Quebec Act, the Ohio country was included in the limits of Canada — an item which opened up the old quarrel with Virginia and Pennsylvania — but Great Britain carelessly signed away the whole region in the next treaty of peace. It was well for England, if she wished to re- tain a foothold upon the American continent, that she let her " new subjects " in Canada keep their language, their religion, and most of their laws just as they had been before the conquest. Her *' old subjects " in the southern colonies, so soon as they no longer needed her strong arm to beat off the French from their northern, the Indians from their western borders, forgot past favours and remembered only present grie ances. When they broke into open revolt, they counted upon the French Canadians siding i68 A CHILD'S 'i.-~- with them, but few of the new subjects did. The Jesuits, to be sure, favoured the move- ment, but their order had lost its power since the Pope had suppressed it in 1773, and the rest of the clergy, as well as the seigneurs, stood lirm for British rule. They well knew that the Americans, if successful in gaining their independence, would never put up with an estabhshed Roman Catholic Church, nor continue the old feudal system of hold- ing land. 1775. Most of the habitants, as the country people were called, refused to light either for England or against her, but those in the Lake Champlain district sided openly with the troops of Congress when Ticonde- roga and Crown Point fell into their hands. These forts the Americans took by surprise, before their garrisons knew there was any war ; but not so the one at Chambly, whose commander yielded disgracefully, without a struggle. St. John'3, though weaker by far, stood a siege of seven weeks before it, too, surrendered ; and thus the way was left open for General Montgomery and his troops of Congress to march u^oon Montreal. That city had then about thirteen thousand people, many of whom had come from New York or New England since the conquest, and these of coarse looked upon the invaders HKSTORY OF CANADA 169 as their friends. Here was a chance to do away with the Quebec Act, they thought. The original French citizens had no choice in the matter, for they knew that their town could not be defended, so they made the best terms they could with Montgomery. Three Rivers too sent word that she would submit to his rule, and the Americans were sure that Quebec would do the same. She might have done so had it not been for her gallant governor. Sir Guy Carleton stayed on in Montreal till just two days before Montgomery arrived, on November 13th, and when he gave up hope of holding that town he made all haste down to Quebec, going in disguise as a habitant on board of a coasting vessel. He arrived none too soon. Colonel Benedict Arnold, whom Congress had sent to unite with Montgomery, was already before Quebec, having brought six hundred and fifty men from Casco, now Portland, Maine, a six weeks' march by the route of the Kennebec and Chaudiere Rivers. Quebec had a garrison of eighteen hundred, made up of British soldiers and sailors, and French Canadian volunteers. When Montgomeiy joined Arnold, the besiegers had about the same number of men, but they reckoned wrongly when they Br 1 if U I- t j,i ;f ill II 170 A CHILD'S counted upon getting help from within the walls. The first thing Carleton did was to turn out of the gates all the citizens who were in favour of giving in to the Congress troops. Those who remained were to be relied upon. England was a long way off ; she had let them alone and had not been unkind to them. The "Bastonnais" were near, and enemies of old standing ; they should not take Quebec. Montgomery knew that help would come to Canada from Great Britain in the spring, so soon as the ice was out of the river ; therefore Quebec must be taken in the winter, which was now well advanced. He had not cannon enough to knock down the walls ; the only chance lay in a surprise. The defenders also knew that a sudden attack in an unexpected quarter was the one way by which the enemy could get in ; and though their numbers were too few to guard every possible approach, they kept constantly on the watch, sleeping in their clothes, ready to rush from one point to another at the first alarm. On the last night of the year, the Quebecke.s knew there was something on foot, because they saw rockets going up from below the cliff to the west of the town. Montgomery was thus letting Arnold HISTORY OF CANADA 171 were they know that he had started to carry out the plan which they had formed. This was to make a pretence of attacking the walls from the Plains of Abraham, to draw the garrison off in that direction, while the real attempt was being made in the Lower Town. Arnold was to advance upon it from St. Roch, the suburb round the corner of the cliff, near the St. Charles River, while Montgomery marched down the bank of the St. Lawrence into Champlain Street. The forces were to meet, storm Mountain Hill together, and force their way into the Upjicr Town ; but the meeting did not take place. 1T76. Carleton had ordered three barri- cades with cannon upon them to be set up in the Lower Town — one at either end of the street called Sault-au-Matelot, and one at the western end of Champlain Street. It was about four o'clock on the morning of New Year's Day that Montgomery and his men drew near the last-named barrier. It was pitch dark and a mixture of snow and rain was falling. Everything was so quiet they thought they were going to surprise the post, but when they came near enough there was a blaze of cannon and muskc: ) ; Montgomery fell dead along with a dozen of his men, and the rest retreated in disorder. (■'•;' 172 A CHILD S Arnold, advancing to the other side of the town, had no better hiclc. With his seven hundred men he got as far as Sault-au- Matelot Street, but the guard was on the watch there also ; he was wounded in the tirst attack and had to be carried ^o the rear. His second in command succeeded in forcing the lirst barricade, but was caught in a stinging tire from the houses between it and the second, so that he had to sur- render, and more than four hundred of his men were made prisoners. The Americans did not again try to take Quebec by surprise, but Congress sent more troops and the siege was still kept on, in spite of the ravages of small-pox among the men. There was much sickness in the town too, but help came for it at length on the 6th of May, in the shape of a British frigate, soon followed by another and a sloop of war with reinforcements that made the Canadians able to march out of their gates upon the foe. But the Americans did not wait to be attacked ; they retreated so quickly that even some dinners were left, uneaten, behind them. A light took place in May at the Cedar Rapids of the St. Lawrence, where three hundred and ninety Americans surrendered to about the same number of English and HISTORY OF CANADA 173 Indians. An American force tried to take Three Rivers in June, but was defeated by a like number of French Canadians and British regulars. The Congress troops had held Montreal all the winter without opposi- tion, but in the early summer they thought it safer to draw back to Lake Champlain. Sir Guy Carleton forthwith set to work to build a fleet upon that lake, to replace the one destroyed by the Americans the year before, and, if possible, to regain the forts upon it. The summer was over before his ships were ready, but on the nth of October, along with a number of Indians in canoes, he gave battle to Arnold and defeated him. The Americans destroyed Crown Ticonderoga was afterwards the British, so that Canada held the lake and was freed from her invaders. 1778. Governor Carleton was succeeded by General Haldimand, who planned and partly made the citadel at Quebec. It w^as he, too, that began the system of canals on which Canada prides herself to-day. Those that overcame the Cascade, Cedar, and Coteau Rapids of the St. Lawrence were the fust canals in America. Being at war with Spain, France, and Hol- land, as well as with her revolted colonies, Point, but retaken by once more t !i 174 A CHILD'S Great Britain had licr hands too full with her foes to rememl)cr her friends. The faithful among her old subjects in America were not encouraged in their loyalty, but left to be bullied and beaten, tarred and feathered, robbed and even killed by the party who wished to break all connection with Eng- land. Canada opened wide her doors to receive these refugees from the States, who were called United Empire Loyalists. Among them was the greater part of the Mohawk nation, who were given lands upon the Bay of Quinte, and on the Grand River, (lowing into Lake Erie, where their descendants abide till this day, though it is doubtful if there is a full-blooded Iroquois among them. 1783. The year that the treaty of peace between England and the United States was signed at Versailles, a number of Montreal merchants formed the North-west Company and entered into the fur trade in the region where the Hudson's Bay Company had been supreme for over a hundred years. 1786-1792. Captain Cook, famous for his voyages round the world, was sent by Eng- land, in 1778, to the Pacific coast of what is now British Columbia to see if there was a channel likely to lead through to the Atlantic, but he did not find even the Straits HISTORY OF CANADA 175 of Juan de Fiica, tlioiit$h he was as near to them as Nootka Sound, Vancouver Island. He got so many costly furs from the Indians there that other voyagers were encouraged to go out, and one of these, Captain Meares, built the ihst vessel launched upon the Pacific. It was called the Nort/i-wcst, and could carry forty tons. He also set up a forti- fied storehouse at Nootka, but it was taken by the Spaniards, who clu";ned the whole coast on account of voyages that had been made to it by their sailors. Captain George Van- couver was then sent out to make the Spaniards leave Nootka, which they did, and the English claim to the whole coast of British Columbia was made good. Meanwhile the U. E. Loyalists had kept on pouring into Canada. Those whose courage, or whose cash, could only carry them a little way over the border, settled near Montreal, in the Eastern Townships ; but many went on up the St. Lawrence in open boats, camping out on shore by night, and took up land to the north of Lake Ontario. They founded Kingston in 1783. Others crossed the Niagara River from New York State, laying out their farms along the southern shore of the lake ; and this was the beginning of Upper Canada. 1783. About twenty thousand U. E. ^, ^"^> IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 l:^|28 |2.5 • so "^^ ■■■ ,^ 1^ 12.2 I.I i:"" 1^ '■^V •* ^ 6" ► V f. /I. /: V /A Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, NY. 14S80 (716) S73-4503 ^^ s 176 A CHILD'S Loyalists came from the New England States into the Acadian country, where they settled in the valley of the river St. John and founded the town of that name. The next year the separate province of New Brunswick was made, and two years after that its capital was chosen in Fredericton, which had been founded by the U. E. Loyalists in 1784. The fur trade, that had so long been Canada's chief support, now began to give place to lumber. The tall forest trees of New Brunswick made the best possible masts for the ships of the king's navy. Nova Scotia also got her share of the new colonists, and they increased her dv e for the things of the mind. Even in 1788, " the hungry year," King's College was founded at Windsor, and four years later it became a university, the first in Canada. In Prince Edward Island, named from the Duke of Kent, father of Queen Victoria and commander of the British forces in America, and also in Cape Breton, the U. E. Loyalists mixed well with the Scotch Highlanders, who had begun to emigrate in large numbers to both islands in 1773. Many of the Loyalists had been very well off in their old homes, but they cheerfully endured the hardships that cannot be HISTORY OF CANADA 177 the k - w avoided in the opening up of new settle- ments. The British Government gave them help after a time, supporting some of them for three years, until their farms could keep them, and giving them cows and imple- ments for clearing and tilling their lands. 1791-1793. When the Revolution came to France, the French Canadians were heartily glad they had nothing to do with it. A people devoted to church and king, they could look only with horror upon the overthrow of both. The Quebec Act satisfied their ideas of government, but naturally the new settlers to the westward, who had been used to send members to an assembly, did not like it, and the result was that a division was made between Upper and Lower Canada. Sir Guy Carleton, now Lord Dorchester, came back as governor- general over all the provinces, each having a lieutenant-governor of its own. The first for Upper Canada was Colonel J. G. Simcoe, who left his mark in the roads he laid out as a result of walking and paddling throughout his province. Dundas Street from Toronto to London, with its continuation, the Governor's Road and Yonge Street from Lake Ontario to Lake Simcoe were opened up with a view to giving access to the new capital of Upper Canada which he had N 178 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF CANADA It founded— Toronto, then called York. The first assembly for the province had met at Niagara, but that was thought to be too near to the United States. It was during Simcoe's time that slavery was abolished in Upper Canada. There had never been many negroes in the province, but their numbers were largely increased, as the years went on, by runaway slaves from the United States, who were protected in a genuine " land of the free." 1796. Lord Dorchester and Simcoe were recalled in the same year. ONIMUO PART FOURTH TO THE EXD OF THE SIXETEEXTH CEXTURY CHAPITER XV THE WAR OF 1812-I4 1807. In the early years of the nine- teenth century Great Britain was much troubled by her sailors deserting to the American navy, where the rules were not so strict and they received more pay. Her right to search United States ships for deserters was bitterly denied by their captains, who often coaxed English sailors to work for them. When the British ship Leonard caught up to the U.S. frigate ChesapeakCy and told her to give up the English sailors among her crew, she refused to obey, and therefore got a i8o A CHILD'S broadside from the LeonanVs guns, whose sailors then boarded her and took off the deserters by force. This was done in time of peace and the Government in England blamed the doers of it, but the ill-feeling between the two nations kept on getting stronger, and five years aftei'wards it burst into open war. Canada had hitherto felt only the benefits of being a British colony ; now she was called upon to bear some of the ills. She had no quarrel with the United States, but was attacked by them as the weakest and nearest part of a great empire ; and most nobly did she rise to the defence. The result of the good treatment given to the Indians in Canada was shown by the way they came forward to fight her battles, particularly the Mohawks, whose name had once spread terror throughout her borders. The Shawnese came to the front too, a band which had been driven from their homes on the Wabash River by the Americans and burned to avenge their wrongs. The chief of this tribe was called Tecumseh — a fine- looking man of thirty-five, brave, as many Indians were, but wise and kind-hearted, as many were not, he kept his warriors from scalping and from other savage tricks. Sir James Craig had been appointed governor- HISTORY OF CANADA til general of Canada when it seemed likely that there would be a war with the United States, because he was a good soldier, but he made himself very unpopular with the people, ruling them as he would a regiment. Prompt and decided in everything he did, Governor Craig would have been a capital man for the head of affairs when the war really did begin, but by that time he had been replaced by Sir George Prevost, a general too, but not a good one, and most of the Canadian disasters were due to his slow- ness and bad management. Happily, some of those who had control under him were wiser and more daring. There was General Brock, for example, whose name will be held in high honour by Canadians when Prevost's is long forgotten. Brock was a tall, robust man of fifty-two, who had been ten years in the country and knew how to get on with the Canadians better than most Old Country officers. He did not expect the militia to be like regular soldiers, and when they could be spared he let them go home to attend to the work on their farms. He was lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, where most of the fighting took place, but the whole country leaned on him ; his spirit put confidence into the soldiers wherever he appeared, and he only lost one ite A CHILD'S man by desertion during the three years of his command. It was the Niagara peninsula which the United States longed for — that fertile triangle of country which follows Lakes Erie and Ontario to the southward — but they did not doubt that the whole of Canada would speedily become theirs ; for was not England fighting for her very life against the all -conquering Napoleon, and what could Canada do with her four hundred thousand people opposed to the six millions in the United States, and with but five thousand regular troops to defend a frontier of seventeen hundred miles ? She soon showed what she could do. 1812. On the 17th of July, at the very opening of the war, the post at Michili- mackinac was taken by surprise by a band of fur-traders, and Canada thus got control of Lake Michigan, No more than in 1776 did the Canadians jump for joy at the idea of becoming citizens of the United States. General Hull, who had crossed the river from Detroit on the 12th of July, camped near the village of Sandwich, but he found his proclamation about the liberty he had brought to a down-trodden people treated with scorn, and when it came to fighting he was badly beaten by Tecumseh and HISTORY OF CANADA 183 his band. General Brock followed the Americans back to Detroit and took possession of that town on the 16th of August. Its surrender was followed by that of twenty-five hundred troops and the whole State of Michigan. Their former experience made the Americans hesitate about attacking Quebec ; Nova Scotia and New Bruns- wick were safe, because New England did not approve of the war and took no part in it ; it was the nine hundred miles between Quebec and Detroit that were threatened. The United States troops tried to place themselves firmly on the St. Lawrence, so that they might keep supplies from reaching Upper Canada. It seemed easier to starve her out than to fight her, though Brock had under him only thirteen hundred men, of whom the half were Indians. He had less than a thousand with him in October at Fort George, which faced Fort Niagara at the mouth of the river, when he heard that fourteen hundred Americans had crossed in the darkness and had made their way to a strong position on Queenston Heights, below the falls. Brock rode to the scene in hot haste, but while leading his men up the [fir t »«4 A CHILD'S 1 1 steep hill to dislodge the invaders, he was shot through the breast and died almost at once. His last words were, " Push on the York Volunteers ! " and the York volunteers did push on, driven mad by the death of their beloved general ; but it was not until more men came up from Fort George, to raise their numbers from six hundred to a thousand, that the Canadians, under General Sheaffe, stormed the heights and drove the Americans backwards over the steep bluff up which they had climbed. Nine hundred and sixty of them preferred to surrender as prisoners. This victory did much towards giving the Canadians con- fidence in their power to defend their borders, even against a superior force ; and the tall stone monument erected to General Brock, on Queenston Heights, keeps the memor)- of it ever green. The third as well as the second landing of American troops on Canadian soil took place on the Niagara River, this time above the Falls, where again they crossed by night, hoping to take Fort Erie at the head of the stream ; but Fort Erie refused to be taken. Canada needed all her land victories to make up for the losses England was having at sea. Her best ships were busy near Europe, and those that came to the American HISTORY OF CANADA 185 war were mostly old and out of repair. Their guns could not carry so far as those of the United States, whose gunners quickly found that they could batter a British ship to bits while keeping out of range of her cannon ; or if she sailed too fast for them, they had plenty of home ports to run into for refuge. In the first live sea-fights of the war the Americans were victorious, but in each case the United States vessel was the heavier of the two, earned more guns, and had a larger crew. 1813. The first battle of the new year took place in the west, where the whole country had been in the hands of the Canadians since the fall of Detroit. A body of Kentucky riflemen trying to retake it were met and defeated on January 23rd at Frenchtown, on the Raisin River, by a some- what larger force of British. Seldom had Canada the advantage in numbers. Her troops on the Niagara frontier were but half so many as those across the river ; and there were twenty thousand men in arms ready to be poured into the country between Kingston and Montreal, where there were less than five thousand to oppose them. But battles are not always to the strong. When the Americans had crossed the St. Lawrence on the ice and made a raid upon if 1 86 A CHILD'S Brockville, robbing houses and taking off peaceful villagers as prisoners, they were repaid by an attack on the fortified town of Ogdensburg, further down the river. Major Macdonell of the Glengarry Highlanders was the hero of that exploit, leading four hundred and eighty men of different regi- ments. They surprised the garrison, took seventy-tive prisoners, burned the barracks and four war vessels, but did no harm to citizens or to private property. From Sackett's Harbour, opposite Kingston on Lake Ontario, came most of the American war vessels that did damage to the Canadians, and it would have been taken at the iirst but for Prevost's want of enterprise. Twenty- five hundred men sailed from there to York (Toronto), a defenceless village of less than a thousand people, but then, as now, the capital of Upper Canada. They burned the public buildings, and took away much plunder from private houses ; then crossed the lake to the mouth of the Niagara River ; but the Canadians blew up Fort George, and deserted all the other frontier posts at their approach. The garrisons of these, joined together, made up an army of sixteen hundred men, under General Vincent, who ordered their retreat to Burlington Heights at the head of Lake Ontario. The Americans HISTORY OF CANADA 187 followed them as far as Stoney Creek, a tiny stream running into the lake about seven miles from the Heights, and there they encamped. On the night of June 5th, under cover of the darkness, seven hundred of Vincent's men, led by Colonel Harvey, fell upon the American force, five times larger than their own, and completely routed it, took the two leaders prisoners i?nd more than a hundred men besides. The invaders retreated towards the Niagara, and gave up all the posts they had taken upon it except Fort George. The Canadians advanced as they retired, .md two hundred Mohawks from the Grand River and Caughnawagas from the St. Lawrence came along to help them. Five hundred Americans sallied out of Fort George one dark night in June, bent on surprising the Canadian outpost at Beaver Dam ; and they would surely have succeeded in their plan but for the brave act of Laura Secord, a farmer's wife of the neighbourhood, who walked nineteen miles through the woods and swamps, past the pickets of the enemy, and warned the British of the pro- posed attack. So it came to pass that it was the Americans who were surprised by falling into an Indian ambush, and when Lieutenant Fitzgibbon appeared and demanded their if,' i88 A CHILD'S 111 fi' 11 instant surrender if they would be saved from massacre by the savages, they thought they were surrounded by a 'arge force and gave themselves up as prisoners. This was rather awkward for Fitzgibbon, who had only fifty men, but he did not let the enemy know that, and he managed to prolong the business of the surrender until another party of British soldiers came to keep him in countenance. The Canadians now returned to the Niagara frontier to be the attackers, not the attacked. They captured Forts Schlosser and Black Rock on the American side early in July, but the same month saw a number of their vessels taken by the fleet from Sackett's Harbour, and saw also another burning and robbing raid upon York. British boats were victorious on Lake Champlain ; but the hottest fight of the year was upon Lake Erie on September loth, when Captain Barclay, with six ships, met Commodore Perry with ten smaller ones, and the Canadians were defeated. This gave the Americans control of Lake Erie, and the power to shut out supplies from Detroit, so General Proctor decided to give up that post, which the Canadians had held for a year, and make his way back into Canada with his four hundred British and eight hundred M HISTORY OF CANADA 189 Indians under Teciimseh. He was followed by an army of three thousand Americans, and a battle was fought on the 5th of October at Moravian Town, an Indian settlement on the Thames. The British had no faith in their leader, and they ran away after the Hrst attack ; but not so the Indians, who stood steadfast with their brave chieftain. Tecumseh was at length shot dead, and then his tribesmen scattered, while the victors burned Moravian Town, and they held Amherstburg until the close of the war. This defeat in the west was balanced by victories in the east over the two American armies that were marching upon Montreal. Three hundred French Canadian volunteers were foremost in the famous hght at Chateauguay, where ten times their number were defeated. By a clever blowing of bugles and yelling of Indians the United States troops were led to think themselves in the middle of an immense army, and they Hed in great disorder. The other victory was at Chrystler's Farm, above the Long Sault Rapids of the St. Lawrence, where the invading army of three thousand was met and beaten by eight hundred British on November 12th. The month of December left scars on the banks of the Niagara. The harmless village 1 ' ) I 190 A CHILD'S m \ of Newark was burned for no cause by the New York militia, and its old people, children, and invalids turned out homeless on a cold winter night. That cruel deed made the Canadians very angry, and they in their turn crossed to the American side and burned every place from Lewiston to Buffalo. The British defeats at sea of 18 12 were not continued in 18 13. It was in the month of June, in the latter year, that the well- matched battle took place between the Chesapeake and the Shannon, which crowds from Boston went out in pleasure boats to see. They had the displeasure of seeing their frigate taken in about ten minutes and towed off as a prize to Halifax. 1814. Four thousand United States troops on the way to take Montreal in the spring were stopped by three hundred and forty Cana- dians posted in a strong two-storey mill on the Lacolle River, a branch of the Richelieu. Oswego was taken by the Canadians in May, but Fort Erie was lost to them in June. They were beaten also at Street's Creek near Chippewa, but made up for that by covering themselves with glory at Lundy's Lane. That battle was fought near Niagara Falls ; it lasted from nine o'clock at night till mid- night on July 25th, and was the hardest fought light of the whole war. The HISTORY OF CANADA 191 Americans were double in number to the Canadians, and both sides claimed the victory, but the Canadians held their ground, while the Americans retreated to Fort Erie. The British failed in an attempt to dislodge them from there, but on November 5th the Americans retired to their own side of the river, for the war was over. Its last scene in Lower Canada was the failure of Sir George Prevost to take Plattsburgh on Lake Cham- plain, for which he was greatly blamed. The United States did not get off scot-free for the damage she had done to Canada. When Great Britain had beaten Napoleon, and was free to turn to America, she sent a fleet to blockade and bombard the Atlantic ports of the United States. The Capitol and other public buildings in Washington were burned in return for what had been done at York. At the veiy close of the war the British army lost two thousand men before New Orleans ; but the Treaty of Ghent brought peace and goodwill on Christmas Day. Neither side kept anything that had been taken, so that the war left boundary lines where they had been before ; but the United States had suffered terribly in her commerce and shipping, while Canada had gained in patriotism and in self-reliance. NEM^BRUNSWICK CHAPTER XVI MISGUIDED PATRIOTS 11 FTER the war was over Canada went forward at a quick march. The St. Lawrence was just two years behind the Hudson in having steamboats^ The Accommodalioity which made the first trip between Quebec and Montreal in 1809, was designed by John Molson, and her hull was built on the river bank behind his brewery in Montreal. The first steamship to cross the Atlantic was built in Quebec in 1831, and called the Royal William ; the famous Cunard line was started in Halifax, but the first Atlantic liners owned in Canada belonged to the Allans of Mon- treal. The Rapids of St. Louis, which had barred 192 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF CANADA 193 the way to the west for Jacques Cartier and every later voyager, were overcome by the Lachine Canal in 1821, and even Niagara Falls were surmounted by the building of the Welland Canal, eight years later. Vessels now sailed without hindrance from Quebec to the head of Lake Huron. 1826. New Brunswick had a set-back in the terrible forest lire that began at the Bay of Chaleur and spread over the country until eight thousand square miles of woods were burned. Two thousand people were left homeless, and over a hundred were either burned or drowned in the waters on which they had set out for safety in rafts too in- secure. Even the fishes in the streams, the seagulls, the snakes in the woods, died from the intense heat, and many cattle were lost that had no stream near to run into and save themselves. Help for the sufferers came in from the United States as well as from Great Britain and Canada, to the amount of ;f 43,607. Fredericton, New Brunswick, was half burnt up the same day, though not in the same fire ; and three times has St. John's, Newfoundland, been laid in ashes, the last time in 1892. Vancouver, British Columbia, had her fiery trial in 1886, when fifty Hves were lost and only four houses left standing; but the help that one province gives to u 194 A CHILD'S ' I another on these occasions binds them all more closely together. New Brunswick College, Fredericton, dates back to the first year of the century, and the free schools of Lower Canada to the second, while McGill College, Montreal, was founded in 1813. Pubhc schools were started in Upper Canada in 1816, and in 1827 Toronto stepped forward with her university. Nova Scotia, whose chief sup- port had been hitherto her fisheries, found a new outlet for her energies in coal-mining, begun at Stellarton, though coal had been shipped from Cape Breton a hundred years before. The first railway in Canada was a line of fourteen miles between the St. Lawrence and the RicheUeu. It was begun in the first of the two Cholera Years, 1832 and 1834. That dire disease was brought to Quebec on an emigrant ship from Ireland, and it carried off its thousands in the two summers. The rush of emigrants continued, but no increase, either in population or in prosperity, made any difference to the Colonial Office in London, usually spoken of as " Downing Street," from the plac" where it is. The rulers there were anxious to do right by the colonies, but they did not understand that they had passed the kindergarten stage and were ready to enter the school proper. HISTORY OF CANADA 195 True, they elected members to their assem- blies, who were supposed to manage the affairs of the country, but these were really in the hands of the Council in each province. The members of that body held office for life, and when once they got in they did not care whether what they did pleased the people or not. Each new governor that came out depended on the Council for advice, and through him it managed to keep control of all public offices and lands, as well as of the money collected in custom duties. The councillors were not robbers, Hke Bigot and his crew, but they loved power, and were bound to have it all locked up in a certain little circle composed of themselves and their friends. In Upper Canada this cUque was called " The Family Compact." The governors of the period, too, were honest men ; not one of them tried to get rich at the country's expense, and several of them were personally popular with the Canadians — the Duke of Richmond, for ex- ample, the worst ruler of the lot, whose death from the bite of a tame fox caused great grief in the colony. He and all the rest came out with the idea hrmly fixed in their minds that their first duty was to see that the Canadians obeyed orders from Downing Street, even about their smallest la*"! ill 196 A CHILD'S BW.' I } ' i Pi local affairs, though the postage on a letter to England was four or five shillings, and it took weeks to get there. The same kind of mistakes had ended in the revolt of the thirteen colonies, but British America was too well mixed with U. E. Loyalists to think of following their example. What each province wanted was to have its Council composed of men not only elected by the people but responsible to the people for what they did ; holding their places only so long as they kept the public confidence and were re-elected. That is what is meant by Responsible Government, and that is what Canadians enjoy to-day ; but in the year of Queen Victoria's coronation it was not so much a matter-of-course as it was in the year of her Diamond Jubilee. One standing grievance of the Reformers was the way in which lands set apart for the clergy were given to those of the Church of England alone, though there were in the Canadas more Presbyterians and Metho- dists than Episcopalians, and more Roman Catholics than all other denominations joined together. This was a point upon which William Lyon Mackenzie had much to say. He was a Scotchman, and the editor of the Colonial Advocate, published in Toronto. Some of his remarks about the land laws. HISTORY OF CANADA «97 the Post Office, the way in which education was discouraged, and pubhc meetings for the discussion of poHtics forbidden by the Family Compact, were highly displeasing to the friends of that body. One light June evening in 1826, when Mackenzie was out of town, fifteen young men, who considered themselves gentlemen, broke into his printing office, smashed his machines, and threw the types into the bay. These "kid-gloved roughs" were fined, and Mackenzie, who had been on the point of giving up his paper because it did not pay, was able to keep it going on the strength of the ^625 damages he obtained. The ill-usage he had received made him a hero in the eyes of his townsfolk ; he was elected to the Assembly, and when " muddy little York " had twelve thousand inhabitants and called itself the City of Toronto, William Lyon Mackenzie was its first mayor (1834). The Family Compact had so much power they could generally have members that pleased them elected to the Assembly, and these felt bound to do their bidding. Mr. Mackenzie did not please them, and there- fore they had him expelled three times, and three times the people sent him back again. The excuse the Tories made for their tyranny was that so many Americans, drawn by the ■& •>i' 198 A CHILD'S \i !< P I I cheapness of land, had come into Upper Canada, there was danger of its being annexed to the United States ; and that their party, being mostly U. E. Loyalists, were the best guardians. In their determination to give England her due, they forgot what was due to the colonies. A commissioner was sent out from Downing Street to look into the complaints, but the only result of his report was that the Reformers were told that they could not have Responsible Government ; that if the Assembly refused to vote money to be spent by the Council, the latter could take it out of the public funds without asking leave. Some of the Reformers, sure that they had right on their side, believed that sooner or later Downing Street would become sure of it too, but Mackenzie could not wait. Fifteen hundred men put down their names on his list as being willing to take up arms for their rights — provided they could get the arms. There were four thousand muskets stored in Toronto City Hall ; these must be taken by surprise. Sir Francis Bond Head, the lieu- tenant-governor of Upper Canada, had sent away all the regular troops to Lower Canada to quell the uprising there, refusing to believe that there was any trouble at his own door, though he was well warned by Colonel Fitz- gibbon, the hero of Beaver Dam. HISTORY OF CANADA 199 1837. Seven or eight hundred men met Mackenzie at Montgomery's Tavern, on Yonge Street, a few miles out of Toronto, but they were badly armed, and before they could march into town the bells rang out an alarm. Fitzgibbon mustered the volunteers to defend the City Hall and remove the arms it contained to a safer place. Help came from Hamilton too, under Colonel, afterwards Sir Allan, Macnab, who marched out Yonge Street with five hundred militiamen and quickly routed the rebels on Montgomery's Farm. Mackenzie made his escape to Buffalo, New York State, whence, buoyed up by the sympathy given him, he and his friends established themselves on Navy Island and pretended to rule Canada from there. The little side-wheel steamer Caroline went back and forth between the island and the Ame- rican shore carrying provisions to the rebels, but one dark winter night a party of Macnab's '• Men of Gore," who were guarding the Canadian side, rowed across the swift and dangerous current, seized the Caroline as she lay at her wharf, put the crew ashore, set the steamer afire, and sent her all ablaze over the Niagara Falls. The rebels were thus stai*ved out. The President of the United States had If • 200 A CHILD'S i forbidden any of its citizens to help the insurgents, but his orders were not obeyed, for there were always plenty of idle men in the larger towns glad of an excuse for a plundering excursion into Canada. Four hundred of them were met on the ice of the Detroit River by a smaller band of British regulars and driven back to their own shore. There was another light in the same district the next year, when four hundred and fifty rebels and their friends crossed from Detroit to Windsor, and did a lot of damage on their march towards the village of Sandwich. There Colonel Prince met them with half the number of militia, and succeeded in beating them so badly that they made no more raids. 1838. The most heroic stand of the rebel- lion was made at Prescott in November of that year, under a brave and skilful soldier from Poland, Colonel Van Schultz. Of the six hundred men who joined him at Ogdens- burg, partly " patriots " and partly American seekers of land, only one hundred and seventy reached the Canadian shore. There they were caught in a trap, for the American authorities seized their boats and they could not get back again, nor could the rest of the six hundred come to help them. Being hotly attacked, the invaders took refuge in a big stone wind- HISTORY OF CANADA 30I mill near Prescott, and held out there for three days, till regulars came from Kingston with cannon strong enough to batter down the walls. Then they gave up, and Van Shultz with eleven others was brought to trial and hanged. 1837. In Lower Canada, the rebellion took more the form of a war of races. The French Canadians, who numbered three times more than the British, thought it was not fair they should have no voice in the governing Council. Their leader was Louis J. Papineau, Speaker of the House of Assembly, who well knew how to stir up the excitable minds of his countrymen against the powers that be. He was better as a talker than a fighter, and when the " Sons of Liberty " were called to arms, it was Dr. Wolfred Nelson who commanded them. He lived at St. Denis on the Richeheu River, and before there had been any fighting in Upper Canada, a battle took place there which lasted from nine o'clock in the morning till four in the afternoon of November 23rd. The troops from Montreal, who were tired before it began with their twelve-hour march through the mud, could not drive the rebels out of the four-storied stone building in which they had placed themselves ; but the victory did Nelson no good. He had not i I il 202 A CHILD'S ' ( t I ( i the means to keep up a war ; and when his followers heard that another body of soldiers was coming against them they went home, and he made his way over the line into the States. So did Papineau. There was another skirmish two days later in the neighbouring village of St. Charles, but the rebels ran away at the first cannon-shots. At St. Eustache, north of Montreal, some " Sons of Liberty " took pos- session of a stone church, and had to be burnt out of it. A final attempt to turn Lower Canada from her allegiance to Great Britain was made by a brother of Dr. Nelson in the autumn of 1838. After a fight with the Caugh- nawaga Indians, in which the rebels were beaten, the latter marched on to Odelltowri, where it was the mihtia who gained the church and the insurgents were not able to put them out. As in Upper Canada, citizens came from the United States to help the " patriots," and stayed only long enough to help themselves. Priests and seigneurs stood firm for British connection, and when the leaders of the revolt had all sought safety in the States, the people soon came back to their senses. There was no fighting in Nova Scotia nor in New Brunswick, simply because the leaders of the reform party had better judgment tnan ti HISTORY OF CANADA 203 id when body of ey went the hne m days of St. the first orth of )ok pos- 3e burnt Lower Britain n in the Caugh- Is were jlltown, led the able to citizens sip the 3ugh to s stood en the ifety in :o their to seek to gain their ends in that way. Joseph Howe, editor of the Nova Scotian, and a statesman who served his country honourably to the day of his death, was a very different man from William Lyon Mackenzie, of Toronto. Howe hated the rule of the few over the many just as heartily, and he too, as a member of Assembly, lifted up his voice against the oppression of his own province ; but he had a cooler head than Papineau, and a keen sense of humour that helped to keep him sane. Lemuel Allan Wilmot was the leader in New Brunswick and a good speaker too, though not so witty as Howe. The plan of both men was to keep on appealing to the lawgivers at Downing Street, without breaking the laws, on the principle that constant dropping wears out a stone. The stone did wear out in the end, but its yielding was delayed by the rebellion, for of course so much talk about annexation sent all the moderate Reformers over to the Tory side. tia nor eaders it tnan BlUnSH COUMBIA CHAPTER XVII I I THE NEW DOM IX ION 1838. At length there was sent to Canada a governor-general who was clever and strong-minded enough to think for himself, and not to be ruled by Council or Family Compact. Lord Durham was only six months in the country, from May till Oc- tober, but in that time he took pains to get at the root of the trouble, and he fully suc- ceeded. Nor was he afraid, as the governors before him had been, to tell unpleasant truths to Downing Street, about how much cause Canadians had had to revolt. Great Britain had learned something by the loss of her other colonies in America and was more than willing to act upon Lord Durham's report. 204 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF CANADA 205 In course of time each province gained her heart's desire, Responsible Government. 1840. Lord Durham's advice was also carried out in the union of Upper and Lower Canada, with Kingston for a capital. The French Canadians did not like that arrange- ment ver^' well, looking upon it as a scheme for doing away with their language, laws, and religion. The English minority in Lower Canada would be turned into a majority, and have things all their own way in the Assembly, when joined by the English of Upper Canada. Before very long the Upper Cana- dians wanted to send more members to Parliament because they had more people than Lower Canada ; but the latter would not let them. So the two provinces jogged along in an uncomfortable harness, pulling together about as well as an ox and a mule might do. 1842. French and English colonists had fought about the boundary line of Acndia ; the quarrel was now between lumbermen of New Brunswick and the United States. They had come to blows in 1839, and their two Govern- ments saw that the time had arrived when the matter must be settled. England was far away and did not care very much about it, so by the Ashburton Treaty, a handsome slice of New Brunswick was given to Maine. The m I'm > t r 206 A CHILD'S Americans were sharp enough to keep out of sight a correct map they had of the boun- daries agreed upon at the Treaty of Versailles. 1849. The Canadian Parliament voted mone- to pay damages to those who had had property destroyed in the late rebellion ; but Upper Canada objected to any of this fund going to Lower Canada, where, it was said, all the people had been rebels at heart. Montreal was having its turn of being capital, and when the governor, Lord Elgin, signed the Rebellion Losses Bill, he was mobbed in the streets. The rioters then went to the House of Parliament, turned out the members, and burned the building to the ground. 1858. That settled Montreal's fate as the capital of Canada ; and Queen Victoria was asked to choose a new site, where good buildings would be erected for Parliament to meet in every year, instead of being changed from place to place as it had been. The Queen fixed upon Bytown, a small lumber village on the Ottawa River, named from Colonel By, engineer of the Rideau Canal. Neither Toronto nor Kings- ton, Montreal nor Quebec could be jealous of so humble a rival, and it was farther away from the frontier than any of them. The name was changed to Ottawa, which thus became the permanent capital of Canada. HISTORY OF CANADA 207 The same year saw a submarine cable laid from England to Halifax, and dollars and cents used instead of pounds, shillings, and pence. 1859-1860. The next year was noted for a change in the land system of Lower Canada. The Government bought out the seigneurs and gave each habitant the chance to buy his own farm — thus doing away with the feudal system which had been in force since the settlement of the country. The lands set apart for the clergy were given up to be used for the purposes of education, and Canada has never since had an established Church. The visit of the Prince of Wales was a great event in the colony. He opened the Victoria Railway Bridge which spans the wide, swift St. Lawrence at Montreal, and is the largest tubular iron bridge in the world. His Royal Highness also laid the corner- stone of the Parliament Buildings at Ottawa. 1866. When the war between the North and South in the United States was over, a number of idle soldiers were let loose upon the country, and some of these who belonged to the Fenian Brotherhood thought that the time had come to revenge Ireland's wrongs by making a raid on Canada. The United States Government took no steps to stop them. In the month of May, one Colonel ^1 Iff I .5 * J i ■J' 208 A CHILD'S ( > I, li O'Neil, with nine hundred Fenians, crossed from Buffalo in scows and made for the Welland Canal, to destroy it ; but before they got there they were met at the village of Ridgeway by five or six hundred militia from Toronto and Hamilton — shopmen, clerks, and mechanics, who had never smelt powder. The i6th Regiment of British regulars was approaching from another direction, but the volunteers were in too great a hurry to wait for it. Seeing some horses' heads on the horizon, the colonel, an auctioneer from Hamilton, shouted the com- mand, '' Form square to receive cavalry ! " No cavalry came of course, but those youths whose faces had been turned homewards by the stupid order, charged in that direction, and their comrades quickly did the same when fired upon by the Fenians. The in- vaders ran away too when they heard that the regulars were coming, and so the canal was saved. During the next three or four years the Fenians made several trips over the Canadian border at different points from Quebec to Manitoba, but at length the officer in com- mand of the American fort nearest to Winni- peg, on the Red River, arrested Colonel O'Neil, and his followers soon scattered. It was in the autumn of 1864 that the first HISTORY OF CANADA 209 crossed for the before ; village I militia lopmen, er smelt British another in too ig some onel, an ;he com- ivalry ! " i youths yards by irection, le same The in- ard that Ihe canal ;ars the Canadian lebec to I in com- Winni- Colonel tered. 1 the iirst steps were taken towards a union or con- federation of all the British colonies in North America. The Maritime Provinces — Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island — had sent delegates to meet at Char- lottetown, the capital of Prince Edward Island, for the purpose of talking about a union among themselves. To this meeting came a strong deputation from the Canadas, Upper and Lower, proposing the larger scheme of uniting all the provinces, and this was further discussed at a conference held in Quebec a month later. Thirty-three delegates met there for eighteen days, and seventy-two resolutions were adopted which met with approval in Great Britain, but were not at once agreed to by the different provinces. Upper and Lower Canada were the strongest in favour of confederation, and so soon as it was settled they changed their names and became the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Nova Scotia was displeased because her Government agreed to confederate with- out taking a second vote from the people about it, and stirred up by the eloquence of Joseph Howe, still her most famous states- man, she went so far as to try to get out of the union a year after it was made. Her wounded feelings were soothed in time, 1 ^^ 110 A CHILD'S u ■■ chiefiy by the generous help given by her sister provinces at the time when a large portion of her population was brought to the point of starvation by a bad season in the fisheries. New Brunswick was not very enthusiastic, until the unfriendliness of the United States made her long for the support of the other provinces. The New Dominion of Canada, which was born on the ist of July, 1867, is worthy of having its birthday ever remembered with pride and joy by future generations of Canadians. From the American war the provinces learned one lesson of importance, and that was how to confederate. The trouble in the United States had arisen through the central government at Washington having too little power and each individual state too much. The thirteen EngHsh colonies had sprung up with different laws and with different kinds of colonists. Though they agreed to unite in throwing off the yoke of the mother country, they were still jealous of one another and afraid that state rights would be taken away by the central government, so they yielded no more of them than they could possibly help. Hence it came to pass that the Southern States thought they could go out of the union, whenever its plans did not please them, HISTORY OF CANADA »I n by her n a large ght to the on in the not very iss of the le support Dominion ;he ist of 1 birthday d joy by provinces , and that rouble in ough the n having ual state colonies aws and Though off the were still that state e central more of Hence States n e union se them, and for this right they fought and were defeated. Canada, on the contrary, gave all power to the central government at Ottawa, and it decided what each province should do for itself. The building of schools, for example, and public works of all sorts ; the granting of licences and the payment of taxes ; the punishment of crime and the arrangement of any affairs which the various towns cannot settle for themselves — these are some of the duties of the provincial government which is stationed in the capital of each province, and has its House of Parlia- ment on the same plan as the one at Ottawa. The Dominion Government has control of the banks, the Post Office, the Indians and their lands, the trade between provinces and that with foreign nations, the defence of the country by land and sea, the fisheries, and any other matters that concern the Dominion as a whole. England reserves to herself the right to interfere if the Parliament at Ottawa makes laws that clash with those that the Parliament in London has made in respect to the deahngs of the British Empire with other nations ; but if one of those other nations should dream of conquering Canada, it would find ( 212 A CHILD'S itself face to face with the army and navy of Great Britain. The governor-general of Canada is ap- pointed by the Queen, for five years, and his power, like hers, is moral and social, rather than political, for he can do nothing without the consent of his Council, or cabinet of thirteen members, responsible to the people. The governor and his cabinet appoint the lieutenant-governor for each province, and also the senators, who hold office for life and correspond to the Lords of England. The judges too are appointed for life, mstead of being elected, as in the United States ; and it has been found that justice is more apt to be done by a man who has nothing but the right and wrong of a case to think of, than by one who is likely to be tempted to consider how his judgment will please the voters who have made him a judge and can unmake him at the next election. Canadians proudly affirm that their government is more stable and gives more security to life and property than that of the United States. Its officials are not certain to lose their places whenever a new party comes into power, and are not there- fore tempted, in the same degree, to help themselves out of the nation's pocket HISTORY OF CANADA 213 during the short time that they have the chance. 1873. Prince Edward Island did not come into the confederation till it had been tried for six years and proved a success. Newfoundland saw no advantage to herself in it above the Responsible Government which had been granted her, and the '* Ancient Colony " prides herself in not yet being swallowed up in the Dominion. Nor is Canada overanxious for Newfound- land to join the sisterhood till she gets rid of her " French shore." Better for England to have that affair in her own hands, because it arose out of her having agreed, in the Treaty of Utrecht, to let the fisher- men of France land and dry their fish, erecting stages or huts for the purpose, anywhere in the seven hundred miles between Cape St. John and Cape Ray on the west coast of Newfoundland. This agreement was made in 171 3, when cod- fishing only was meant, but that is at an end, so far as the French shore is concerned. The industry now carried on there is lobster-catching, and permanent buildings have been put up, wherein the lobsters are boiled and tinned, ready for the market. Against the terms of the treaty, the French- men engaged in this work stay on the island 1 ^ 214 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF CANADA all the year round, and they will not let the English take part in the same business nor settle on the disputed shore, and in the&n claims they have been upheld by British ships of war. France owns the two little islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, close by, which are the most famous smuggling resorts in North America and a cause of great loss to the Canadian Customs ; but the quarrel is chieHy between France and England. It is Great Britain who must demand of her neighbour across the Channel what right she has to keep her Newfoundland subjects shut out from a valuable part of their island ; and to ask her also if she does not know the difference between a lobster and a cod. h MANITPBA CHAPTER XVIII THE NORTH-WEST the HE great lone land reaching from Lake Superior to the Rocky Mountains, at the beginning of the nineteenth century owned no rulers but the Hudson's Bay Com- pany and its younger rival, North-west Company. Neither of these wanted settlers to come in, nor did the Indians. The farmer was the foe to the fur trade, driving away the wild animals ; and therefore the outside world was led to believe that the grassy prairies, now known to be one of the greatest wheat-growing and cattle-ranching regions of the world, was 215 I f, I 1 :| ^ .« H^ 1 1 ■ 1 .' I' t !! ! : i I 'ii'i 2l6 A CHILD'S naught but a dreary waste, unsuited for bearing crops of any kind. The employes of the Hudson's Bay Com- pany were mostly men from the Orkney Islands, but the North-west Company found itself better served by FVench Canadian voyageurs and half-breeds, a wild, rollicking lot, but obedient to their com- manders and far more enterprising, as well as better liked by the Indians, than the staider Scotchmen. When the governor of the older Company was the Earl of Selkirk, the same who had taken out High- landers to Prince Edward Island, he thought he could check the Nor'-westers by bringing out a number of his country- men to settle upon the Red River, where the Assiniboine flows into it. 1811. He secured a large grant of land there, and his colonists sailed in July direct from Scotland to Hudson's Bay, the shortest sea route ; but as they were not landed until September, they got no further than Nelson River that first winter, and suffered severely from sickness and want of food. The next summer they reached Red River, only to be met by a band of Nor'-westers, painted and dressed like Indians, who warned them off the lands allotted to them and forced them to continue their toilsome journey on foot HISTORY OF CANADA 217 to the nearest Hudson's Bay post, which was at Pembina, in the territory of the United States. There they spent the winter, -supporting themselves by hunting, and in the spring came down the Red River again. Lord Selkirk sent out more emi- grants, but he neglected to send enough food with them, or implements to till the soil, so that for several seasons they had to go to Pembina for the winter. The North-west Company continued to oppose the settlement. Twice they destroyed it by fire, and on one of those occasions killed its governor and twenty- one of his men. That outrage made Lord Selkirk bring out one hundred disbanded soldiers — French, German, and Swiss — with whom he attacked and took Fort William, the western headquarters of the rival Com- pany. Then he brought more colonists, supplied them with farming tools, and induced the original settlers to come back. Not being of the kind which is easily dis- couraged, they built their log-houses over again and lived on fish, roots, and wild berries while they planted their fields once more. There were no trees to be cut down and the rich soil gave a ready return, but before the harvest ripened there came a plague of grasshoppers, which ate up every tl ! 2l8 A CHILD'S green thing in sight. The hope of winter provision was gone in a night, and once more the settlers had to take the weary tramp to Pembina. They spent the next winter there also, for the grasshoppers had left their families behind them to be fed before those of the colonists. Out of the first eight winters that these emigrants had spent in America, they had so far been able to hold their own for only two at the Selkirk settlement ; and when foes from without ceased to trouble them the Red River itself, through the jam of melting ice in the spring foUowmg an unusually severe winter, rose nine feet in a day, overflowed its banks and flooded the fields and houses. Losing heart through year after year of bad fortune, some of the settlers gave up trying to be farmers and became boatmen, hunters, or labourers for the Hudson's Bay Company. About fifty families made their way east to Toronto, but Lord Selkirk had seed-wheat carried all the way from the Mississippi to help the rest ; and the foreign soldiers he had brought out settled down among them, thus making quite a mixture of nationalities in ihe camp. The war between the Hudson's Bay and North-west Companies had been waged ever since the starting of the latter in HISTORY OF CANADA 219 winter d once weary lie next ers had be fed it these ley had :or only i when e them jam of mg an jet in a ied the ;h rough ; of the rs and ers for Lit fifty ito, but all the e rest ; )rought naking camp. 3 Bay waged :ter in 1783, but most of the fighting had been done between the employes of the two in the far-off wilds, where nobody heard about it. Lord Selkirk's attempt at making a colony brought the strife to a head, and it was kept up with great bitterness until his death. Soon after that the two became one under the government of the Hudson's Bay Company, which bought the Earl's settle- ment from his heirs and made their head- quarters in it, at Fort Garry. None of the colonists were allowed to do any fur-trading on their own account, and they were sup- posed to get all the goods they needed from the Company, which in return bought their farm produce. 1821. The older Company gained much in enterprise by its union with the younger, and became more powerful than ever, with an immense staff, though scattered over so wide an extent of territory there would often be at a post only one or two white men, who were completely at the mercy of the sur- rounding savages ; but their fair dealing kept them safe. Some of the strictest rules of the Company were that the Indians should be treated kindly, should not be cheated out of their furs, should be paid in advance for them when they had no food, powder, or shot, and should be given the H« ' ''I 220 A CHILD'S ( smallest possible amount of strong liquor in return for the results of their winter hunts. The value of all other skins was reckoned by that of the beaver, used so much in Europe for the making of gentle- men's hats. A fox or a bear, a lynx, an ermine, or a sable, was said to be worth so many beaver skins. The sixty thousand Indians — Assiniboines, Crees, Blackfeet, Peigans, Chipewyans, and the rest — became more and more dependent on the Hudson's Bay Company for their daily bread, as the buffalo grew scarce and they could not get enough of its flesh to dry and smoke for their winter supply of " pemmi- can." Once the herds had made the earth tremble with their tread as they careered over the plains, chased by Indians on horse- back, who killed, just for sport, far more than they needed, and paid no attention to the laws the Company made for preserving the animal. The Hudson's Bay Company gained respect both for itself and for the British flag under which it traded, and in its long term of rule there were no Indian wars such as spread terror through the western parts of the United States. It kept out lawless fur-traders from the south, who would have ruined the Indians with liquor, as well as HISTORY OF CANADA 131 speculators, who would have stolen their lands. Thus it saved the country for Eng- land and gave Canada a good lesson upon how to govern the vast territory when it came into her hands. 1869. That happened by purchase, the Company stili keeping its posts and a small portion of land around each ; but the change of rulers was badly managed, and directly after she had created the new province of Manitoba, the Dominion found herself with a rebelHon on her hands. The leader of it was a half-breed called Louis Riel, a man of some little education and much influence with his countrymen, who looked upon him as an inspired prophet more worthy of their regard even than the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church. Canada would have done better to have explained her plans to her new subjects, and not have let herself be represented in the west by some surveyors and loud talkers, who had much to say about what they were going to do when the Red River settlement became Manitoba. The half - breeds feared they would lose their farms. The lieutenant-governor sent from Ottawa to the new province by way of the United States, was met near the frontier by Louis Riel with a body of armed men, who 222 A CHILD'S out the mted at around British tig post )ld was Fraser •mpson, ny sur- century r I 1858. Twenty or thirty thousand miners trooped in among the lonely mountains of the mainland, chiefly from the California diggings, where they had known no law but the revolver. They were hard to control, but Governor James Douglas, also a chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, proved equal to the task, and for his strong hand in keeping order and his energy in having good roads built to open up the country for settle- ment he is often called "the Father of British Columbia." 1866. Vancouver Island and the mainland were under separate governments for eight 3'ears, and during that time New West- minster, on the Fraser, was the capital of the latter, but the full dignity was returned to Victoria at the union of the two, which was the first step towards the entrance of British Columbia into the Canadian Con- federation. The Pacific province was not very anxious to go in. Her colonists had come direct from "England, round Cape Horn or northwai^s from the United States ; what interest had they in further- ing Canada's ambition to spread herself from ocean to ocean ? Settlers from Ontario, trailing their fami- lies and effects in huge covered waggons over the plains, did well when they got as lliir m m ' ■' 234 A CHILD'S far as the prairie province, Manitoba. To the westward was a vast plain over which the Indian still roved in savage freedom, and then came the Rocky Mountains, a high wall, hard to climb, guarding the approaches to British Cclumbia. But the makers of the Dominion saw that unless the provinces united and presented a solid front to the en- croachments ot the United States, the latter would soon own all the country west of the Rocky Mountains, up to the Arctic Ocean, for they had now bought Alaska from Russia. 1867. If the British Columbians did not care particularly for Canada they cared still less about annexation. Though there was much coming and going with California by sea, the idea of taking second place to San Francisco for good did not please Victoria. The English colonists spoke out strongly in opposition to those from the United States, and determined to keep up the British connection. They would join the Canadian Confederation if Canada made it worth their while. In the first place, she must shoulder their debt of $1,500,000, which the ten thousand settlers in the province were finding a heavy burden ; secondly, and most important, she must build a railway across the continent, con- HISTORY OF CANADA 235 necting British Columbia with the Canadian railways in the east. 1871-1886. Canada accepted tlie terms, and accordingly began the Canadian Pacific Railway within two years from the time that the new province came into the union ; but in agreeing to finish it within ten she had promised more than she could perform. To survey miles and miles of unknown and mostly mountainous country in search of the best route ; to bridge deep canons through which gigantic rivers roar in tor- rents ; to tunnel through the shoulders of mountains and make safe roads along the sides of dizzy precipices ; to avoid the prob- able track of avalanches, and w^hen all was done to build snow-sheds to shelter the road where the drifts were found to be deepest was a labour in which many an older and wealthier nation would have spent twenty years. Canada is proud that she completed it in fifteen. The Dominion Government undertook the task, but it was afterwards turned over to the Canadia:i Pacific Railway Company, which sent a through train from Montreal to Vancouver just five years after the time first appointed. The resources of British Columbia are still so slightly developed that they seem bound- less. The Fraser River has treasures other ■'I •I i! ;! '\ 236 A CHILD'S than gold with which to enrich the indus- trious. Countless salmon, some of them seventy pounds in weight, run up into its waters in the summer, and often there will be as many as two thousand Hshing-boats about its mouth at one time, which will each take two or three hundred lish into the nets in a single night. These are for the two score of canneries on the banks of the Fraser, and there are half as many more on the smaller rivers and inlets of the coast. A tin of British Columbia salmon has become a well-known article of food in the east, but it represents only a part of her wealth in fish — she has many other varieties. Although it is not for farming lands that the Pacihc, like the prairie province, is specially noted, she has live hundred thou- sand acres, chiefly in the Fraser valley and on Vancouver Island, that are suitable for the purpose, and much that is now used only for grazing will in course of time be sown with grain. It was not farmers, but miners and speculators who took up the land, and the trees are so large and the undergrowth so thick it is not easily cleared. The giant Douglas fir, which along the coast lifts its head three hundred feet in the air, clear of branches till half-way up, and mea- sures five or six feet through, is king of the HISTORY OF CANADA 237 he indus- of them 3 into its here will ing-boats will each ) the nets the two 1 of the my more he coast. 5 become east, but realth in inds that vince, is ed thou- illey and table for ow used time be lers, but up the and the cleared, he coast the air, id mea- g of the British Columbia timber, which ranks only second to her mines. It was in the year 185 1 that some Indians, watching a blacksmith at work, told him they knew where he could get more of the black stoiie he was using on his fire, and that remark led to the discovery of the coal mines at Nanaimo, which have been worked ever since. It looked like a special provision for the steamships which began to run to Japan in 1887, that coal should be plentiful in Vancouver Island, just as the amount of the same in Nova Scotia seems to have been stored there on purpose to supply the fast Atlantic liners. By the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway, not only has the wilderness of the North-west been made to blossom Hke the rose into farms and villages, but the long- sought-for short cut to the East has been dis- covered. There is no stronger evidence of that fact than the number of Chinam.en seen in British Columbia. Her chmate, damp on the coast, dry among the mountains, will attract many more desirable colonists as the years go on, for the warm winds and currents of the Pacific Ocean make her winters milder and her summers cooler than those of any other province of the Dominion. Tourists, too, need no longer go abroad for change of 238 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF CANADA air, nor for glaciers, snow-capped peaks, and other magnificent scenery. Switzerland is but a commonplace penny pamphlet com- pared with that new and wildly romantic three-volume novel, British Columbia. PRINCE EOMMV) ISUINO CHAPTER XX " DAUGHTER AM I IN MY MOTHER'S HOUSE, BUT MISTRESS IX MY OWN " 1888. Great Britain is beginning to realise that Canada is grown up. The day is far past when her concerns were settled by English statesmen without consulting her own. No longer can the United States get for the asking as much of her territory and as many of her fishery rights as they want. The Americans do not relish the change, and they rejected the last Washington Treaty in which Nova Scotian fishery claims might have been settled, because at length some- thing like justice was proposed to Canadian interests. Still less did the United States com- missioners relish the decision in the 239 a40 A CHILD'S I ) m; ! SI' Behring Sea dispute, which was settled by arbitration in Paris (1893), for they were told that they could not claim the ocean as well as the earth, and that Canadians had a per- fect right to hunt for seals in Behring Sea. Both nations bound themselves not to take the animals in the early summer, nor to use firearms in their pursuit. While under the rule of France, the sort of man sent out by the king as governor had much to do with Canada's peace and pros- perity ; but after Britain gained the colony, the people came more and more to the front and the governor went more and more into the background. Since confederation it has mattered but little to Canadians, except those living in Ottawa who come in contact with him personally, what the governor-general is like, though an exceedingly clever statesman, such as Lord Dufferin, will leave his mark wherever he goes. The improvements he car- ried out, or suggested, while in office (1872- 1878), as well as the able manner in which he spoke about Canada's needs and her futme after he w^ent home, has given him a high place in her regard. By the trip which he and Lady Dufferin took to the Pacific Coast in 1876, Manitoba was made to feel herself an important part of the Dominion and to reaUse what great things were ex- HISTORY OF CANADA 241 jttled by vere told 1 as well id a per- ring Sea. t to take )r to use , the sort jrnor had ind pros- e colony, the front nore into ion it has ;ept those tact with general is ;atesman, his mark ts he car- :e (1872- in which and her ^n him a ip which 2 Pacific to feel lominion vere ex- pected of her ; while British Columbia was charmed out of her irritation at the delay of work upon the Canadian Pacific Railway, on which all her hopes were built. The Marquis of Lome and the Princess Louise who succeeded (1878-1883) were acceptable rulers in a social sense, but the real power of the country rests with the prime minister at Ottawa. The man in whom the people have shown most confi- dence by keeping him longest in that office was Sir John A. Macdonald, a leading spirit in forming the confederation and the first premier of the New Dominion. Some acts of his Tory government in connection with the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway were not approved of, and for five years he was out of power, when Alexander Mac- kenzie, head of the Liberal party, took the helm ; but Sir John came back, saw the great railway completed, and was premier until his death. Whatever may be said of his use or abuse of power, he did not employ it to enrich himself, for he died a poor man (1891). By putting a high duty upon American goods, he had encouraged Canadian manu- factures, and though this ** National PoHcy " is contrary to British ideas about free trade, so long as the United States keeps up a high R 343 A CHILD'S tariff wall Canada must do the same in self- defence. But not by laws alone does she protect her borders. After confederation all the British troops were withdrawn from Canada, excepting a few at Halifax, the well- fortilied city which has a cable laid to Ber- muda and is the headquarters for the British navy in the North Atlantic. The same posi- tion in the North Pacific is held by Esqui- mault, a strongly defended harbour in British Columbia. There are a few Canadian regu- lar soldiers at Fredericton, Quebec, Kingston, Toronto, London, and Winnipeg ; but the militia is the chief defence, and the number of men between eighteen and sixty in a population bordering on five millions is not to be scorned. 1893. Those who stood on the dock at Victoria and watched the first steamship sail in from Sydney must have felt a thrill of brotherly friendship go out towards the far- off Queen of the South. The feeling will grow stronger yet when the submarine cable connects Canada and Australia, helping Greater Britain to lauf ^ "' i'^'' .ng distances and to look forv rl dent hope to the day when e i > a yet closer union with Lcb Brit; a. Sir John Macdonal I was the first of her statesmen to make Canada feel herself no HISTORY OF CANADA 243 le in self- does she ration all wn from the well- :l to Ber- le British ime posi- by Esqui- in British ian regu- Kingston, ; but the B number ixty in a )ns is not J dock at nship sail . thrill of s the far- ;ling will ine cable helping distances t hope to yet closer st of her erself no longer a colony but a nation, able not only to manage her own household but to take a hand in the management of her mother's. He was made a member of the Queen's Privy Council in 1879. Sir John Thompson, a later premier of Canada, had just received the same honour when he died, suddenly, at Windsor Castle, and his body was brought home on a warship (1894). By the time Imperial Federation is a fact, not a sentiment, Canada will be not the least important factor in the sum. If size be taken into account, she has that ; if natural products, she will then be the greatest wheat- grower among nations ; nowhere else on the globe is there so much coal and timber, such valuable fisheries. Already she ranks as the fourth ship-owning country of the world, and the fresh-water highway into her very heart is not equalled anywhere. In 1895 the crown was placed upon her canal system by the opening of the one at Sault Ste. Marie, between Lakes Huron and Superior, and by the time the St. Lawrence canals are made the same depth — twenty feet — ships can sail from the ocean to the head of Lake Superior and be in Canada all the way. 1896. The year after the waste lands in the northern part of the Dominion were divided into the districts, Ungava, Franklin, r 244 A CHILD'S ! il Mackenzie, and Yukon, the last- lamed sprang into worldwide fame by the discovery of gold on the Klondyke, a Can?,dian branch of the Yukon River. As usual on such occa- sions, there has been a franlic rush of gold- seekers, and more than the usual number of lives lost by the upsetting of boats in rivers dangerous with rapids or drifting ice ; or by cold and starvation in toiling through the snow-choked mountain passes of the sub- arctics. There is said to be more gold there than anvvv'here else in the world, but it is harder to get at than elsewhere, because the ground is frozen hard all the year round and has to be thawed out — no easy matter where wood and coal are so scarce. Dawson City, from which the adventurers start for the Klondyke, is called the greatest mining camp the world ever saw, but, unlike an American mining centre, it is well governed. Law and order have never lost their hold, though the district is shut out from the rest of the world for eight months in every 5; ear. 1897. French Canadians have always taken a foremost part in Dominion politics, but Sir Wilfrid Laurier is the first French Canadian prime minister. Like most of his co-patriots i i public life, he is a good speaker and he was a credit to his country at the Victorian Diamond Jubilee in London. That HISTORY OF CANADA 245 ;d sprang jovery of )ranch of ch occa- of gold- imber of in rivers e ; or by )ugh the the sub- M there but it is :ause the )und and er where son City, for the ng camp Lmerican Law and ough the ; of the ;ar. always poHtics, : French st of his speaker y at the )n. That event was celebrated by an outburst of loyalty that took the form of a public holiday with processions and speeches in every town and village of Canada. Laurier's government marks the return to power of the Liberal party for only the second time since confederation. Its first attention was turned to the settlement of the Manitoba school question that had been gathering trouble about itself ever since the Separate Schools for Roman Catholic children were voted down by a Protestant majority in 1890. To please both parties, it has been arranged that priests and ministers alike shall be allowed to give religious in- struction to the lambs of their flocks for half an hour every day in the ordinary schools, if enough of the parents desire it to make the clergymen think it worth while. The governor-general, Lord Aberdeen, took much interest in the matter, but indeed there was nothing that concerned the Domi- nion in which he and the Countess were not actively interested. Lady Aberdeen will always be gratefully remembered as the founder of the Canadian branch of the Na- tional Council of Women, and for her many and varied schemes for the good of the country. The Earl of Minto, the present governor, is not a stranger to Canada. When I rt''i ( ; 246 A CHILD'S he was Lord Melguncl he served on General Middleton's staff in the second North-west Rebellion. That Canada is beginning to have a say in her mother's house, was seen when Great Britain altered her trade treaties with Germany and Belgium at her request and for her benefit ; while the Dominion in return agreed to favour the entrance into her markets of British goods above those of any other nation. Another sign of the times was the introduction of the Imperial Penny Postage Stamp, on Christmas Day, 1898, making it cost no more to send a letter from Canada to London, England, than to London, Ontario. 1899. It was in 1897 that the British Association for the Advancement of Science met in Canada for the second time. One of the gentlemen there present. Prince Koropotkin, visited the North-west and was much impressed with Mennonite settlement there. He wrote an account of his trip in an English magazine when he went home, and was asked shortly afterwards if Manitoba would not make a suitable home for the Doukhobors of Southern Russia, who were being fiercely persecuted for their religion. The result has been the arrival in Canada of seventy-live hundred of these peculiar HISTORY OF CANADA 247 I General )rth-west ve a say :n when treaties ■ request ninion in I into her je of any le times il Penny ly, 1898, tter from London, British Science tie. One Prince and was ttlement s trip in it home, Manitoba for the no were religion. Canada peculiar people, who are like the Quakers in believing it wrong to take up arms against a fellow- man. They are hardy, honest peasants, well worthy of the help the Dominion Govern- ment is giving them, and they will do more for the future of Manitoba than any number of gold-seekers. The strongest nations have been built up with a mixture of races, and the time is at hand when French and English will remem- ber only that they are Canadians, will glory alike in the deeds that the ancestors of either tongue have done upon this continent, and, resolving not to be unworthy of the noble heritage left them, will look hopefully into the future, will " Greet the unseen with a cheer." ' i ■!■ I lit Aben Aben 140 Aberc Acadi Aix-la Albai] Alberl Alexa Algou S3. < Allouf Ameri Amhei Argall Argen: Arnolc 170, Ashbu Asslnil Assinil Athab: Avaug( Barcl Batocli Beam, Beauh: Ben •, Bienco Bienvil Bigot, 148, ] Big Be; INDEX Abenakis, Indians, 5, 117, 118 Abercrombie, General, 137, 138, 140. 145 Aberdeen, Lord and Lady, 245 Acadians, 113, 116, 120, 121, 122, 125, 126 Aix-la-Chapelle, Treaty of, 125 Albanel, Father, 86 Alberta, Territory of, 226 Alexander, Sir William, 44, 47 Algonquin, Indians, 5, 6, 7, 51, 52, 53. 69, 70, 71, 73, 93. 94 Allouez, Father, 87 Americus Vespucius, 23 Amherst, General, 141, 149, 160, 163 Argall, Samuel, Captain, 43, 44, 63 Argenson, Vicornte d', 75, 78 Arnold, Benedict, Colonri, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173 Ashburton Treaty, 205 Assiniboia, Territory of, 226 Assiniboine Indians, 220 Athabasca, Territory of, 226 Avaugour, Baron d', 78 Barclay, Captain, 188 Batoche, Battle of, 226 Beam, Regiment of, 1 38 Beauharnois, Marquis de, no Ben •, Regiment of, 138 Biencourt, 43, 44, 57, 63 Bienville, Le Moyne de, 108, 109 Bigot, Intendant, 113, 141, 147, 148, 161, 195 Big Bear, Crce Chief, 224 Biloxi, 108 Blackfeet, Indians, 5, 220 Black Watch, Regiment, 137, 13S, 163 Boscawen, Admiral, 141, 144 Bougainville, 150, 152, 155, 160 Bouquet, Heniy, Colonel, 163, 164 Eraddock, General, 130, 131, 146 Bradstreet, Colonel, 145, 163 Brebeuf, Father, 65, 71 Breda, Treaty of, 48, n6 British Columbia, 11, 174, 175, 193, 229, 233-238, 241 Brock, Sir Isaac, 181, 183, 184 Cabot, John, 20, 21, 22, 43 Cabot, Sebastian, 20, 21, 22 Calliercs, Governor, 105, loO Canadian Pacific Railway, 225 , 235. 237. 241 Cape Breton, 16, 20, 22, no, 121, 122, 124, 144, 176, 194 Carillon. See Ticonderoga Carleton, Sir Guv, i66, 169, 170, 171. 173, 177 Carignan-Salieres, RcL^imcnt of, 79 Caughnawaga Indians, 106, 187, 202 Carticr, Jacques, 24-33, 38, 193 Cayugas, Indians, 6 Ceioron de Bienville, 128 Champlain, Samuel de, 37-41, 4>;- 61, 63, 64, r/), 71, 7(j, 80 Charnisy, d'Aulnay, 45, 46, 47 Chateauguay, Battle of, 189 249 250 INDEX m 11 Chipewyans, Indians, 220 Chrystler's Farm, 189 Church, Benjamin, Colonel, 120 Columbus, Christopher, 14, 19, 20, 23 Cook, Captain, 174 Cortereal, Gaspar, 21, 22 Courcellc, Governor, 81, 86, 89 Coumtrs dc bois, 76, 86, 97, 103, 109, ui Craig, Sir James, 180, 181 Crees, Indians, 5, 220, 224 Cut Knife Creek, Battle of, 226 Daxiel, Father, 71 Daulac, Adam. 73 Davis, John, 33 De Monts, 38, 40, 41, 49, 53, 62 Denonville, Governor, 94, 95 Detroit, 103, 104, 162-164, 182, 183, 185, 188, 200 Dickens, Inspector, X. W. M. P., 225 Dieskau, Baron, 132 DoUard. See Daulac DoUier de Casson, Father, 83. 84 Donnacona, 27, 28, 30, 31 Dorchester, Lord, 178. See Sir Guy Carleton. Douglas, James, 233 Doukhobors, 246 Drake, Sir Francis, 33 Drucour, Chevalier de, 144, 147 Duchesneau, Intendant, 90 Dufferin, Lord, 240 Du Lhut, 92, 103 Dumont, Gabriel, 224, 225, 226 Durham, Lord, 204, 205 Duquesne, Fort, 130, 131, 145, 146 Duquesne, Marquis, 129 Elgin, Lord, 206 Ericson, Leif, 15, 16 Eric the Ked, 14, 15 Eskimos, 2, 3, 17, 229 Family Compact, The, 195, 197, 204 Fenians, 207, 208 Fish Creek, Battle of, 225 Fitzgibbon, Colonel, 187, 188, 198 Five Nations, or Six Nations, Indians. Sec Iroquois. Forbes, Brigadier, 146, 163 Fox, Indians, 104, 134 Francis the First, 22, 25, 32 Franciscans. See RecoUcts Franklin, Sir John, 229 Eraser, Simon, 2so Frobisher, Martin, 33 Frontcnac, Governor. 89, »/), 92-95, 97-100, 105, 106 Fuca, Juan de, 34 Galin^e, Father, 84, 85 Ghent, Treaty of, 191 Gitfard, 77 Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 34 Greenland, 2, 14, 18 Guienne, Regiment of, 138 Habitation de Quebec, 50, =;i, Haldimand, General, 160, 173 Half-breeds, 221, 223, 225, 226, 227 Harvey, Colonel, 1S7 Head, Sir Francis Bond, 198 Hearne, Samuel, 165 Hebert, 57 Hennepin, Father, 90, 92 Henry the Fourth of France, 36, 43 Hochelaga, 28, 29, 31 Howe, Hon. Joseph, 203, 209 Howe, Lord, 137 Hudson's Bay Company, 86, loo, 112, 113, 165, 174. 215, 216, 218, 219, 220, 221, 230, 231, 233 Hudson, Henry, 42 Huguenots, 38, 41, 45, 58, 62, 109 Hull, General, 182 Huron Indians, 6, 7, 28, 52, 53, 55, 56, 58, 64, 65, 66, 68, 71, 72, 73, 86, 87, 103 Iberville, Pierre le Moyne d', 99, 100, 107, 108 Icelanders, 223 Indians, 1-12, 19, 67, 215, 237 Iroquois, Indians, 5, 6, 7, 29, 52, 53, 56, 69-74, 80, 83, 86, 89, 90, 93, 94, 95. 9*<. 99. lOi, 103, 104, 106, 107 ^iZ, 164 Jesuits, 43, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 71-7S 78, 84-86, 90, 93, 94, III, 117, 168 Jogues, Father, 72 Johnson, Sir William, 132, 133, 161, 164 Joliet, Louis, 84, 87 Joncaire, 107 .', ccollets 4.85 )i rey, 34 of, 138 UEBEC, 50, 51, Jl, 160, 173 :3, 225, 226, 227 <7 ioncl, 198 '5 90.92 of France, 36, 1, 203, 209 ipaiiy, 86, loo, 215, 216, 218, 231. 233 ^5, 58, 62, ick; 28, 52, 53, 55. 68, 71. 72, 73. le Moyne d', 215, 237 6, 7. 29. 52, 53. 16, 89, 90, 93, 94- 104, 106, 107 6, 67, 68, 71-75. 14, III, 117,168 1 132, 133. 161, INDEX ■251 KiRKK, Admiral, 59, 60 Klondykc, 244 La Barre, Governor dc, 93, 94 Labrador, 2, i6, 25 Lachip.e, Massacre of, 95 La Galissoniere, Comte de, 127 La Jonquiere, Marquisde, 113, 127, 129 Lalemant, Father. 65, 71 La Mothe-Cadillac, 103, la; Langucdoc, Regiment, 138 La Peltrie, ^Lldanle de, 68, 69 La Keinc, Kegiment, 138 La Roche Dallion, 65 La Roche, Marquis de, 35. 37 La Salle, Robert Cavalier de, 83- 85. 87-96. 104, 107, 108, 112, 113 La Sarre, Regiment, 138 La Tour, Charles de, 43-47 La Tour, Claude de, 44, 45 Laurier, Sir Wilfrid, 244, 245 Laval, Bishop. 74-79, 90, 93, 100 La Verendryc, Pierre Gautier de, III, 112, 113, 222 Lc Caron, Father, 64, 65 Le Jeune, Father, 68 Le Loutre, Abbe. 125 Lc Moync, Charles, 99, 107 Lery, Baron de, 22, 36 Levis, Chevalier de, 136, 147, 148, 150, 154, 155. 157-160 Lome, Marquis of, 241 Loudoun, Lord, 134 Longueuil, 107 Louis XIV., 79, 94, 108, 109, 118 Louis XV., 140 Louisbourg, 122-125, 141-145, 147 Louisiana, 93, 104, 109, 147, i6r, 164 Lundy's Lane, Battle of, 190 MacdOXALD, Sir John A., 241, Macdonell, Major, 186 Mackenzie, Alexander, 241 Mackenzie, Sir Alexander, 228, Mackenzie, William Lyon, I96- 203 Macnab. Sir Allan, 199 Maisonneuve, 69, 70 Mance, Mile., 70 Manitoba, 208, 221, 223, 234, 24s, 246, 247 Markland, 16 Maricourt. 107 Marie de 1' Incarnation, 69 Marquette, Father, 87 24: 230 19.J, 240, Masse, Father, 65 Mearcs, Captain, 175 Medicine Men, 67 Membertou, 40, 42, 63 Mennonites, 223, 246 Me/y. Governor, 78 Michilimackinac, 87, 103, 162, 183 Micniac. Indians, 5. 40,63. 117, 125 Middleton. General, 224. 225, 246 Minto. Karl of, 245 Mohawk. Indians, 6, 56, 72, 80, 81, 133. 174. 180, 187 Molson, John. 192 Montcalm, Marquis de, 132-138, 147, 148. 150-154 Montgomery, General, 168-171 Montmagny, Governor, (tf), (n), 75 Montagnais, Indians, 5, 51, 52, 65, 68 Moravian Town, Battle of, 189 Mound-builders, 4 Munay, General, 155-158, 160,166 Natioxal Policy, 241 Nelson, Doctor Wollred. 20 [, 202 New Brunswick, 5, 116, 176, 183, 193, 194, 202. 203. 205, 209, 210 Newfoundl;uid, 16. 22, 25, 26, 34, 40, 48, 100, 121, 122, 193, 213,214 Neutral Indians, 6, 65, 84 Nicolet, Jean, 65 Northmen, or Norsemen, 14-19 North-West Company, 174. 215- 218, 228, 230, 232 North-West Mounted Police, 224, 225, 227 Nova Scotia, 5, i6, 22, 115, 1 16, 122, 125. 176, 183, 194, 202, 209, 237, 239 QJIRWA. Indians, 5, 162 Oneida, Indians, 6 Onondaga, Indians, 6, 72, 107 Ontario, Province of, 5, 209, 223, 233 Oregon, Treaty of, 232 Ottawa, Indians. 5, 103, 161, 162 Otter, Colonel. 225 Outagamies. See Fox Indians. Papixeau, Louis J., 201-203 Peigan, Indians. 220 Perrot, Nicholas, 87 Pepperrell, William, 123 Perry, Commodore, 188 Phips, Sir William, 98, 100, 116 Picquet, Abbe, 128 Pitt, William, 140, 141 252 INDEX Plains of Abraham, Battle of the. 151. '52, 153 I'ontgrave, 37-40, 49 Pontiac, 161, 163 Portuguese, ly Pounclmakcr, 224, 226 Poutrincourt, Baron de, 3H-44, 63 Prevost, Sir Gcori^c, iSi, 186, 191 Prince of Wales in Canada, 207 Prince, Colonel, 200 Prince Edward Island, 26, no, 121, 125, 176, 209, 213, 216 Proctor, General, 188 QUKBKC Act, 166, 1(17, 169, 177 Quebec, Province of, 5, 208, 209, 223 Queensf.on Heiiihts, Battle of, 183, i«4 Kamesay, 155 Rebellion Losses Bill, 206 Recollets, 64, 65, 85, 90 Relations, Jesuit, 68, 83 Revolution, French, 141, 177 Richmond, Duke of, 195 Ridgeway, Battle of, 20S Riel, Louis, 221-224, 226 Roberval, 32, 33 Rogers, Robert, Captain, 133, 137 Royal Roussillon, Regiment, 138 Ryswick, Treaty of, 100 Sacs, Indians, 105, 134, 162 Saskatchewan, Territory of, 226 Scott, Thomas, 222 Secord, Laura, 187 Selkirk, Earl of, 216-219 Seneca, Indians, 6, 71, 83, 107, 164 Shawnese Indians, 180 Sheaffe, General, 184 Simcoc, Colonel, 177, 178 Simpson, Sir George, 230 Sioux, Indians, in Spaniards, 4, 21, 51, 88, 175 Stadacona, 27, 28, 29, 31 St. Ca-tin, Baron de, 118 Ste. Fore, Battle of, 158, 159 St. Gcrmain-en-Lave, Treaty of, 45 Stoney Creek, Battle of, 187' St. ValUcr, Bishop, 101 Sulpician, Order of Priests, 77, 84, Talox, Intendant, 81, 82, 85, 86 Tecumseh, 180, 182, 189 Thompson, Sir John, 243 Ticonderoga, 137-139, 168 Tracy, Marquis de, 79, 80, 81 Tonty, Henri de, 91, 92, 93, 96, 107, 108 Tuscaroias, Indians, 107 United Empire Loyalists, 174, 175. 176. uA 198 Ursulines, 69, 156 Utrecht, Treaty of, 102, 121, 213 Van SchultZ, Colonel, 200, 201 Vancouver, George, Captain, 175 Vaudreuil, Philippe de, 105, no, n8, ng Vaudreuil, Pierre Francois Rigaud de, 132, 136, 148, 152, 154, 155 Verchercs, Madeleine de, 99 Verrazano, 22, 25, 43 Victoria, Queen, 196, 206 Viel, Nicholas, Father, 65 Vincent. General, i86, 187 Vinland, 16, 17, 18 Voyageurs. SecCoiirenn de bois Wai.kek, Admiral, 105, 106 Washington, George, 129 Washington, Treaty, 239 Welland Canal, 193, 208 William Henry, Fort, 132, 134, 135, 137 Wilmot, Lemuel Allan, 203 Wolfe, James, General, 143, 149, 150, 152, 153, 155, 156, 166 Wolseley, Lord, 222 Zeno, 18 UNWIN BROTHERS, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON K. n. 0. f7 e, Treaty of, 45 e of, 187 lOI Priests, 77, 84, ^i, 82, 83, 86 189 .243 ;9, 16S 79, 80, 8r 92. 93i 96, 107, . 107 :)YALISTS, 174, [02, 121, 213 lel, 200, 201 Captain, 175 df, 105, no, mcois Rigaud 52, 154. 155 e de, 99 206 ;r, fii? 3, 187 '■ems de bois 05, T06 , 129 239 208 . 132, 134. 135. Ill, 203 ral, 143, 149, 56, 166 LONDON .0.